Review of the software design/code

Question

This is general question on review of the code/design reviews

If we change code in some unknown area, along with fresh code. Is it better to ask the part of code changed from unknown area to be reviewed by someone who is working in that area ?

Is this bad idea for the very small company to ask changes to be reviewed ?

Difficulty is in small companies there is no proper testing tools to test we have broken some existing scenarios.

Answer 1

Ideally yes, whenever a change of code happens it should be reviewed properly before it goes to production.

Now coming to your question, its always cost effective if we catch a bug in the coding or review cycle if bug goes to production the correction cost is at-least 10 times higher.

Check the review-board https://www.reviewboard.org/ to save time of reviews it can be integrated with SVN/Clearcase/P4/Git and a good time saver.

Comments

Thanks a lot Salil for the reply and info.

Yes i come from a background where we used to review and unittest.

But current company doesnot have such procedure. that too they look at me strangely and talk about it in meetings. The manager says he has hired ppl, whose code is good enough.. so it need not be reviewed. It was bit sad, to get such feedback on my suggestion..

---

Many a times startup focus is not a production grade software rather a prototype and they take shortcuts :) So sometimes business priorities are different.

---

Thanks Salil.. yes i.e true..but difficulty is sometime startups are no longer real startups, as they are couple of years old and have legacy codes ..