Code Review a Good Thing?
FleetingIs code review a good thing?
People tend to force code review, almost dogmatically and implicitly pretending that it is a good thing per se.
I don’t share this opinion. I believe that code review are a instrumental objective that allows to reach several final objectives.
- it allows sharing knowledge,
- it allows sharing opinions about the way we should do things (see guided serendipity),
I believe that those are important objectives, but I also believe that they are not theoretically bound to code review. I generally insist that people should understand that we find important 1. and 2. and we believe that code review are a good way to do that. (see avoir raison pour de mauvaises raisons).
I believe that if people understand the reasons why we want to have code review, they are more able to make sure they perform the code review in a way that is compatible with 1. and 2. Otherwise, I think there are chances that people would just follow blindly the procedure and we would not benefit from 1. and 2.