Category Archives: week2

Post #2: Why Code Reviews Will Help You

Hello fellow readers and thank you for reading my blog. This week I want to talk about code reviews which are essential to the testing process in computer science. I read a blog post by greenido (Ido Green), where he talks about how code reviews will improve you. He begins his blog by talking about how code reviews promote social interaction as you would like your team members make comments on how to improve your code so it is the best it can be. Most companies like Facebook, Netflix and Google are also using code reviews as a way of promoting social interaction and improving as a company. Then Mr.Green goes into other reasons you would ask for a peer review and they are: Bugs(Accidental errors/Structural errors), helps you get better and lastly they will help make sure it is readable/testable. It also benefits developers in many ways such as increases productivity, reduces unit testing/debugging time, less time performing rework and many more reasons. He also dug up some data and research and provide several different examples of times where code reviews have helped. Lastly, he talks about what not to do which is skip a peer review due to time, never judge coder off the review and always suggest solutions.

This blog was very well written and helped me understand why peer review code reviews are important to the testing development. I’m pretty self conscious about most of my work, back when people had to peer review essays for class, I would always hate when someone read my paper because I felt like it was bad. Well with code I know I’m not the best and I understand after reading the blog that to get better I need to have someone help review my code. What makes sense to me, may make no sense to someone else that is reading my code and I need to make sure my team members know what is going on during a certain part of my code. That goes back to part of the blog where Mr.Green talks about readability in your code and how the peer reviews are important for discovering if everything will make sense. Also if you’re working on a project with someone else, you would want the opposite where you want to review their code and make sure you get the general grasp of it so you can understand what it does. In my recent projects that I have had in my computer science classes, I try my best to make sure my code is easily readable for the teacher. Code reviews are essential to the testing process without it coding would be worse.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Benderson's Blog by Benderson's Blog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Pattern 1 : Your first language

 

This pattern talks about the biggest step for every “programmer”. I mean i can also say you need to take this step before you are given the title of a programmer. After reading the section above this pattern which addressed emptying your cup before receiving more, i found it very easily cohesive with the content of this pattern. Programming is almost like nothing you have done before. But its only when you begin to understand it, that you begin to see how in tune it is with things that we do everyday unconsciously.  I agreed with how the author addressed this chapter. Unless you open your mind to accept new understanding and insight, grasping the concept of programming as a whole becomes almost impossible. The only way to truly excel at this craft is to dedicated your entire life as a programmer to the cause of learning and improving everyday regardless of how much you know. because for all you know, a new language can erupt tomorrow and render your task and routine of today, obsolete. Everyday you sit down to program you have to be yielding to learn and grown because there can be a new framework that came out yesterday that can make your life a lot easier as long as you know how to implement it. To better implement new techniques and methods will ultimately depend on your understanding of the basics of programming. And your understanding of the basics and fundamentals can be attributed to your in dept understanding of your first  language and the tasks you used it for. But once you have acquired this knowledge do not allow yourself to be bound by this knowledge but instead use it as fuel to attain new heights in the programming world. Every task that you are able to complete or solve should fuel you to learn the next thing in line. Programming is one of those things that theoretical knowledge only goes a distant. Using the knowledge to build, solve and overcome new challenges broadens one’s understanding of the art and this is the path that leads to greatness. The learning curve of a particular framework or technology grows exponentially in regards to the task and problems it is used to fixed.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Le Blog Spot by Abranti3 Dada Kay and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.