Conducting a Code Review

Code reviews are critical to creating good systems as well as improving your skills as a communicator and developer, both when you're reviewing and being reviewed. Try to keep these things in mind as you write and talk about the code. You should ask yourself the following questions, and try to come to a good conclusion.

• Is the code clean and modular?
• Can I understand the code easily?
• Does it use meaningful names and whitespace?
• Is there duplicated code?
• Can you provide another layer of abstraction?
• Is each function and module necessary?
• Is each function or module too long?
• Is the code efficient?
• Are there loops or other steps we can vectorize?
• Can we use better data structures to optimize any steps?
• Can we shorten the number of calculations needed for any steps?
• Can we use generators or multiprocessing to optimize any steps?
• Is documentation effective?
• Are in-line comments concise and meaningful?
• Is there complex code that's missing documentation?
• Do function use effective docstrings?
• Is the necessary project documentation provided?
• Is the code well tested?
• Does the code high test coverage?
• Do tests check for interesting cases?
• Are the tests readable?
• Can the tests be made more efficient?
• Is the logging effective?
• Are log messages clear, concise, and professional?
• Do they include all relevant and useful information?
• Do they use the appropriate logging level?

Thinking through all of the above questions might not be necessary for every review, but many of them are.

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Last update: January 16, 2022
Created: January 8, 2022