[a4isms]

Another—very old—rationale:

People write code differently when they know that it will be reviewed by people who will not only comment on it, but also form long-term impressions of the submitter's competence and fit based on the code that is reviewed.

[dotancohen]

I've always felt that this is and advantage to open source software. The vast majority of open source software that I've bothered to look at the code for used best practices, was reasonably secure, and was above all maintainable. The bespoke projects that I've worked on at various companies? Complete spaghetti messes almost all of them.

[skydhash]

Pretty much. I use OpenBSD and the basic stance is that you need to look at the code of the system and the various software in ports. Because the only way to get timely support is you helping yourself and then the community will help you. And if you find some hackish code, there’s generally a good reason it’s that way.

[freedomben]

This is the big one IMHO. I've been part of teams where there was zero code review, and where the code reviews were intense, and for sure people write much better code (generally speaking) when they know it will be reviewed. We all do it, even if subconsciously.

I do advocate a balance though. Ridiculous code reviews tend to slow the process down immensely, which is good for some things but bad for others. Finding a good balance is super important IMHO