Code review, also known as peer code review, involves one or more team members reviewing the work of other team members. This includes reviewing changes to the source code before pushing them to the codebase.
Generally, code reviews are really important within teams as they help you enhance the code quality and make your codebase more stable and error-free. Moreover, it also helps programmers build robust relationships and work together more effectively.
Now, in this case, the primary reason you would want the code to be easily understandable is so that other developers can maintain their code without wasting a lot of time figuring out the logic.
Some of the pointers you should keep in mind are:
- Do all the variable declarations make perfect sense? And is the purpose of all the variables mentioned clear to everyone?
- Do all the variables follow a consistent style?
- Does the code work smoothly, without any hiccups?
- Are there any redundant lines of code that could be removed?
- Are there clear comments in the code explaining the complex logic?
- Are there any unit tests present?
- How secure is the back-end? Is your data being taken good care of?
- Are the API calls being documented on time?
What To Do If You Don’t Come From A Technical Background?
Well, in that case, you are left with two key options:
- Either you find someone to do the work for you and pay them time.
- Or you can hire a third-party company to do this important assessment.
It is important to use a third-party company, not the one that originally provided the code, as there won’t be as diligent & strict as you’d want them to be on the review.
What Makes Code Reviews So Important?
Code reviews can ensure a consistent coding style throughout the project so that anyone who may be on the project can read the source code at any time during the development process.
A project can have multiple stages of development, and each stage can be deployed to multiple developers. Each developer has their programming style, and if you stick to it, your project will inevitably become inconsistent.
No matter how well each developer fulfils their role, it is difficult for other developers to effectively participate in the development process.
Moreover, code review also helps make the software delivery process more efficient by catching bugs and simple coding errors with a fresh eye before a product moves to the next level.