Atomic Spin :: Elements of Software

Code reviews are a common practice intended to catch software flaws by having “more eyes” on a piece of code in order to catch costly software defects. Unfortunately, many people dread code reviews, because they are time consuming and many times are not very fruitful. It takes a lot of discipline and similar mindsets to really get a cost-effective benefit out of code reviews. Not to mention that reviews often get slowed by people nit-picking implementation, code style and even arguing over where a comment, paren or brace should go!

For those of us that practice test driven development, we have an added luxury that all of the functionality in our code is backed up by unit, integration and system tests, or some mix of these. These tests also serve as living documentation of the code at hand.

Therefore, it seems that reviews of tests, which verify requirements, would be a much more suitable and beneficial initiative. After all, aren’t we all most concerned with what the code “does” and not so much “how” it does it? The tests capture the requirements put on a body of code, and that is really what is most important to be sharing with fellow developers. This technique would avoid many of the hurdles that inhibit traditional code reviews. Furthermore, changes to tests or addition of tests (requirements) could be done live in a code review and eliminate another round of reviews to ensure all concerns have been addressed. This all leads to less bookkeeping and happier developers!