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by ams6110 3072 days ago
> Occasionally a reviewer will spot a bug

Isn't the code review generally pretty late, i.e. just prior to release? At that point, the code should be passing all unit tests and I'd expect obvious bugs to be pretty unlikely. Non-obvious bugs generally won't be spotted in a code review setting.
2 comments
MaxBarraclough 3072 days ago
Not impossible that the reviewer might spot a bug. There's value in more eyeballs. Useful for spotting dangerous constructs or things like UB in C/C++ that appear to work fine... for now.

Also, lots of software houses don't have formal testing of all new code. Not unusual with GUI code, for instance.

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spathi_fwiffo 3072 days ago
Not sure what you mean by 'late'. I guess it all depends on process defined for your project. Most SCM systems have some way to make code visible before it is published to the live code base (via branches, etc).

Also, passing tests is meaningless if the tests are worthless or incomplete. So, those alone can't be used as a metric of code sanity; Meaning obvious bugs are still possible.

Tests and reviews are just to reduce the number of released bugs. and hopefully increase maintainability.

Also, what's obvious to one developer might not be to another.

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