1 The significance of code reviews
This chapter covers
- Introducing the code review process
- Who this book is for (and who it’s not for)
- How this book is structured
- The benefits of a code review
- How we can make code reviews better
Mike, a developer on a small software development team, just finished a new feature on Friday. He built an entirely new invoice parsing system that would render customers’ invoices as a PDF. And he finished it just in time for his vacation in Cancún. Sure, there were some workarounds and hacks in parts of his code, but hey, it worked. Excited, he quickly merged his new feature into the demo environment; his colleagues (Adrienne, Erica, and Justin) agreed to demo the new invoice parser to the CEO while Mike was out.
On Monday morning, Adrienne stared at her screen confused. She began testing the parser and found that it was calculating the invoices incorrectly. Debugging was almost impossible as she couldn’t make sense of Mike’s code. She asked both Erica and Justin if they could try their hand at understanding the new parser code. After some time, both defeatedly shook their heads “no.” As they huddled around Adrienne’s screen to try and understand the mystery code, Mike shared photos of his vacation in the team’s messaging channel – beaches he laid on, margaritas he drank, and tasty dishes he ate. The team sighed.
