Hey, I want your opinion on code reviews, what is the best way to use them in a professional environment? Pick one of the following and give me your thoughts (from the most forgiving to the most strict):
- no code reviews, they are useless
- optional code reviews
- mandatory reviews on code that is already merged, optional fixes
- mandatory reviews on code before merging (like a pull request), with a time-frame for optional fixes (i.e. whether to fix what has been pointed out is up to the author), merge will occur anyway.
- mandatory reviews on code before merging (PR) with mandatory fixes.
Of course in open source development with public contributions, you’ll often see (5), but I’m not convinced it could work in professional dev.
Edit: I’m talking about a team of 5 mid to senior devs (no junior or interns) working on a 2-3 year project without many security concerns, but feel free to give me your general opinion.
I’ve worked for managers that didn’t believe in the necessity of code reviews, and some that downright hated them. All of them wrote garbage code, and the codebases were equally awful. Some people just cannot handle even the slightest critique.
If you find yourself on a dev team doing anything other than 5, run, don’t walk, and find a new job if you can. If you can’t, focus on increasing your knowledge and skills, because no one else there is going to help you.
Is great advice, which I have followed, and it has served me well!
Thank god you specified dev team. I personally just go by ear and I mainly just work alone