Putting It All Together: Code Reviews

All previous lessons in this chapter lead to the code review. Each section reinforces the others and paves the way for meaningful collaboration in the form of code reviews.

Authors have editors, builders have inspections, judges have appellate courts, and cosmetologists have oversight. Programmers, on the other hand, have none of these things. Although bad code often has serious real-life consequences (such as grounded planes or stolen identities), we don’t handle formal reviews very well as an industry. A healthy code needs accountability, and that requires many sets of eyes on the same code. Here’s the thing about code reviews though: good code reviews take effort, and inconsistent code provides friction that multiplies that effort.