Are Code Reviews Worth It?

JamaicaBay writes "I'm a development manager, and the other day my boss and I got into an argument over whether it's worth doing code reviews. In my shop we've done both code reviews and design reviews. They are all programmer-led. What we've found is that code reviews take forever and tend to reveal less than good UI-level testing would. The payback on design reviews, meanwhile, is tremendous. Our code is intended for desktop, non-critical use, so I asked my boss to consider whether it was worth spending so much time on examining built code, given our experience not getting much out of it. I'm wondering whether the Slashdot crowd's experience has been similar."

Comments

Re:Synergy, leverage, low hanging fruit, etc..

[Tx]

If you truly want to make a decision on whether code reviews are worth it.. you need to know[...]

So what you're saying is we have to have a review of the reviews...we're going to be here a while aren't we?

Line them up

[Anonymous Coward]

Have each developer line up with his/her/its code printed out on a cue card board and stand in a line up. Execute the least likely to make it to the compiler, then you will "motivate" the rest to write better code..

a fucktonne?

[grahamsz]

Damn europeans and their metric system.

How many shitloads are in a fucktonne?

Re:Synergy, leverage, low hanging fruit, etc..

[hplus]

Wait, so you are reviewing somebody else's review of the comment talking about reviewing reviews?

Re:Are they worth it?

[Hognoxious]

In my experience, Pair programmers are more than twice as productive as a single developer when you factor in all the errors and bugs prevented by having two sets of eyes on the same problem.

In my experience, unicorns are 2.7 times better than mermaids at debugging.