[mseebach]

It sounds minor, but I think it's pretty important: The points on his checklist aren't clear yes/no questions, they're a bunch of things you should remember to consider.

Specifically, how do you check "Correctness of algorithms"? What is the criteria to pass that? "Well, I think it's right", of course you do, otherwise you wouldn't have committed it. Formal proof? Unit tests?

Items phrased like this are ripe to become a "looks fine, check" style process-theatre that doesn't actually add anything.

Credit where credit it due, "Are controls laid out in a way that makes sense given visual scan order?" is a bloody good one.

Checklists can be very helpful to make sure you remember to consider everything in the right order. I have a phone screen checklist that includes "introduce yourself" because sometimes I forget and that's embarrassing. At a previous job, we had a "stakeholders that might be affected" checklist used in feature planning (we had gotten into a bad habit of building features that affected the performance profile of the app, causing ops to get paged on the weekend because they hand't been told to expect different behavior, also: removing an arcane feature that we had wrongly assumes nobody used).

One thing to remember when comparing with flight or medical checklists: These people deal in repeating almost the same thing as consistently as possible. Software engineering is rarely like that.

[zimpenfish]

I think even a woolly item like "Correctness of algorithms" is helpful - "why is he using bubblesort for umpzillion items?"

It's not really meant as a yes/no; it's meant to prompt the code reviewer (not you!) into checking the algorithms for insanity. Easy to forget that when you're rushed and hassled and wanting your lunch.

Also, aren't the majority of flight checklists for abnormal situations? And specifically to make sure that things are handled in a sane and sensible fashion when everything is going off klaxon-wise and/or on fire?

[mseebach]

The developer should absolutely follow the checklist as well, otherwise he's wasting the reviewers time.

So, what you're describing is actually a good yes/no question: "Is the best algorithm for the problem used?" (or, better: "Has functionality that is available in a library been implemented by hand?", but that's not your point :) )

No, flights use checklists for even completely routine thing (especially for routine things, because that's where sloppiness will manifest itself first). For an example, if you forget to set flaps correctly before you hit the throttle for take off, you're going to have a bad time, so that's on the checklist. (Of course, these things are largely automated now, so modern aircrafts will yell at you if you don't. I think Airbuses will even override the throttle)

[eru]

> "Is the best algorithm for the problem used?"

Rather: "Is the algorithm good enough?"