Reach Customers Online

Who’s Your Coding Buddy?

“Busy practitioners are sometimes reluctant to spend time examining a colleague’s work. You might be leery of a coworker who asks you to review his code. Does he lack confidence? Does he want you to do his thinking for him? “Anyone who needs his code reviewed shouldn’t be getting paid as a software developer,” scoff some review resisters.

In a healthy software engineering culture, team members engage their peers to improve the quality of their work and increase their productivity. They understand that the time they spend looking at a colleague’s work product is repaid when other team members examine their own deliverables. The best software engineers I have known actively sought out reviewers. Indeed, the input from many reviewers over their careers was part of what made these developers the best.”

From Coding Horror. This is a fun look at one way to improve your programming: asking a peer to review your code. Not in a formal way, necessarily, but in a thoughtful way that puts a different set of eyes on your code. Includes some interesting data about how peer reviews improve code, as well as a link to a new book on the subject of peer reviews. And the WTF cartoon by Thom Holwerda is priceless.

Related Stories

Coding Sexy CSS Stylesheets

A Visit with Alan Kay

Top 100 Software Engineering Books, Ever

The Danger of Commenting Out Code

Why Do Projects Fail?

Coding With Java Technologies

How to be a Software Program Manager

Build PHP Applications With Macromedia Dreamweaver MX