- Code review is not only to say “this is wrong” or “you should do it this way”. It’s also an opportunity for all developers (especially beginners) to say “I don’t understand why you do that”. Every piece of code should be understandable by each member of the team, whatever their experience. Maybe the beginner dev will have to fix a bug on this complex piece of code.
- Beginners often have another point of view (a more scholar, or naive one) that can help other devs seeing things differently, maybe in a better way.
- Beginner devs are as good as anyone to find potential bugs, especially about the business requirements. For instance “I think you forgot to handle this error case“.
- Finally, seeing code from more experimented devs is a good way to improve.
Code review is not finding mistakes, it’s a dialogue between a developer and the rest of their team about a piece of code. It’s a great opportunity to make everyone improve, and it works for junior or senior.
- What things to look for
- How much scrutiny to give
- When you should actually be pulling the code to run it
Heck, _I'd_ appreciate someone teaching me these things...