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Instead of writing something down "What's this for?", go ask the person "What's this for?". I have recently become a primary reviewer for our operating system
by keypusher 13y ago
Instead of writing something down "What's this for?", go ask the person "What's this for?". I have recently become a primary reviewer for our operating system work (device drivers for SAN storage, VLAN networking, init scripts, custom rpms, etc) which involves a whole lot of bash magic and linux system stuff I do not understand. What I do is go ask the guy to explain to me the basic concepts and/or specifics of the change if I don't understand it. That way it's at least possible that an error will be caught, and when I have to go make changes in that area I will have some idea of what I am up against. Code review is a great time to learn more about what you don't understand, and for more eyes to see dark parts of the code. It's also a good chance for the guy to wrote it to go "hey, that's weird..." when explaining it to me, and realize he missed something important.
- jakub_g 13y agoThis. TL;DR: it's really important to be comfortable with saying "I don't know" and asking questions. Unfortunately not every developer is comfortable with it, often it's cultural thing at play (talking about developers from countries like India).
- einhverfr 13y agoAlso keep in mind that there is value in being a rubber duck here. There's also a good chance that in explaining it to you, he will find an error during a kind of review that he wouldn't on his own code otherwise.