I Don't Trust My Own Code

Aijan@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 116 points –
I Don't Trust My Own Code
lackofimagination.org
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I wouldn’t do that, too much tunnel vision and biases.

Absolutely not. Self-reviews are very productive. I can confirm this from my own work and my colleagues, who also find it so.

You're of course free to vary the degree and depth of self-review, but tunnel vision and bias is definitely not overbearing and diminishing in those situations for us.

Someone else will of course see more, what you may not see due to tunnel vision. But that's besides the point.

Weird, never heard of anyone doing this. Aren’t your team self reviewing the code while writing it?

When you finish the final sentence of an essay or a report do you just submit it straight away? You don't read it through?

How do you self-review while writing? What do you mean by that?

I see it as different phases of development, mindset, and focus. You inherently can't be in multiple at the same time.

  1. Problem space and solution exploration - an iterative and at times experimental process to find and weigh solutions
  2. Cleanup and self-review - document your findings, decision-making, exclusions, and weighing, verify your solution/changeset makes sense and is complete (to intended scope)
  3. Reviews

It makes no sense to be thorough during experimental and iterative exploration. That'd be wasted effort.

After finding a solution, and writing it out, a self-review will make you take a systematic, verifying review mindset.