Five-minute code review per day keeps the bugs / overtime away. Writing code is a well-established process, but can easily turn into a work of art (or a break of heart) - that even you won’t be able to understand - if you don’t review your code.
Nearshoring companies have to meet a special criteria when it comes to code reviewing. For them, it’s much more important to apply test driven development (TDD) principles, which can be summarized to one simple concept: think before you write. Afterwards, code reviewing becomes an important method to improve the code’s quality.
Fortunately, Romania’s has an increasing number of developers, which makes it an important market for software development. Year after year, the Romanian market provides more and more IT specialists focused on both personal and professional development, hence interested in code reviewing and methods to improve their work.
Time is our biggest asset, which makes it important for everybody, especially for yourself, to compress the effort and dedicate 5 minutes per day to review your previous work.
For beginning, let’s see the top 3 most used methods in code reviewing:
- Pair programming – You choose a colleague and work together on writing and reviewing the code
- Informal walk-throughs – It’s more like an unofficial brainstorming where a team of developers is led through the product, which allows them to comment regarding possible issues before they emerge (if you are familiar with agile methodology, there should be no problem understanding the process).
- Tool-Assisted – Long live the core review tools! Use them wisely.
Why is it important?
- Saves time. You can find bugs early, when they are easier and cheaper to fix.
- It improves your own programming skills. This is your chance to learn faster how to write clean and efficient code. You can prevent regression, decrease the risk of error and dedicate time on working on features instead of bugs.
- Encourages team bonding. When Nokia released their mission statement “Connecting people”, there is a big chance it saw 2 developers reviewing codes one for each other. This is a big opportunity to bond with other colleagues and develop a learning process equally advantageous for everybody.
- Coding standards compliance. If you are an organized person (and we know you are), you enjoy working under certain procedures. Well, this is your chance to become a pioneer through TDD, a development process that will allow you to establish a new procedure for writing clean and efficient code.
- Higher software security. Security reviews are the Holy Grail of developing applications that require a high level of security.
- Increasing stakeholders’ confidence and attracting new ones/clients. Technical quality is always a good barometer for stakeholders to measure a company’s involvement and for you to gain their confidence.
We’ve presented you part of the benefits you get from dedicated 5 minutes on code reviewing.
If those weren’t enough, we’ve made a list of things you can also do in 5 minutes but which are less interesting than reviewing your code:
- Talking with an annoying colleague on your way to the cafeteria;
- Stalking someone on Facebook (actually, this can be interesting but we don’t encourage it);
- Staring at the ceiling;
- Staring at your laptop;
- Listening a sad and mushy song (you can do both, by the way)
- Trying to find the meaning of life.
Writing code is not for everybody. We highly recommend you to make code reviewing part of your routine, because at the end of the day, a clean, efficient and bugless code is more satisfying than hot doughnuts. You owe it to the code!