Replacing Humans with Software Inspectors

An anonymous reader writes "What if you were able to perform a portion of your code reviews automatically? In this first article of the new series 'Automation for the People', development automation expert Paul Duvall begins with a look at automated inspectors like CheckStyle, JavaNCSS, and CPD. The piece examines how these tools enhance the development process and when you should use them." From the article: "Every time a team member commits modifications to a version control repository, the code has changed. But how did it change? Was the modified code the victim of a copy-and-paste job? Did the complexity increase? The only way to know is to run a software inspector at every check-in. Moreover, receiving feedback on each of the risks discussed thus far on a continuous basis is one sure-fire way to keep a code base's health in check automatically!"

Comments

Re:Just don't get lazy

[phantomfive]

Personally I don't like the Microsoft grammar checker, but I've checked a lot of papers from ESL students, and the ones who use the grammar checker write far more clearly than those who don't. So it is certainly useful for something. I am not sure how grammer checkers affect their English in the long run, though. Perhaps it makes them lazy so they never learn their English? I can see how this tool would also make programmers lazy, thinking their code is good enough (and managers agreeing) when it really is garbage.