23 Aug 2004 darkewolf   » (Journeyer)

I think I proved the benefit of objective peer review of code today, in a round about away.

Here at work we shifted to a new mail system using maildir and it was causing some people some problems. One of the problems was converting old mbox files to maildir. We were given a set of instructions how to do it which were easy to follow.

The engineering manager was being cautious and wanted to test the conversion on a single mbox file. He did so and it wouldn't work.

I scooted over and instantly pointed out where he was going wrong. He had used a line out of a for look and missed some of the conversion:

He typed the following:

mbconv.pl ~/Maildir/$i < mboxfile.mbx

The obvious problem was the $i.

The advantage of objective peer review of code is that the original programmer sees the code for what it is meant to do. The reviewer sees the code as purely code on a syntax level.

I may not know (in a specific sense) what the code the junior programmer next to me is writing is trying to do, but I can look over his shoulder and go "Aha, that line has XYZ error, cause it it will not be accessing the index properly" or something like that.

Oh, the fun of being a programmer again for fun and profit.

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