Crappy code...
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In my earlier years of programming, I wrote some pretty crappy code. Sadly, some of it actually made its way into production and is/can/will cause problems. As I have improved my skills as a programmer (I have a long way to go), I have realized just how important solid source code is and how critical an experienced programmer is to a project. Beging a standalone programmer introduces problems of its own and sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable about the "new territory" I enter with newly written source code. It seems to me that one of the long-term problems of the SD business is that many rookie programmers write lots and lots of code and much of the code is poorly written. Not because they are bad programmers or even poor leadership, but because they simply don't know the right way to do certain things. Examples include: initializing variables, proper way to initialize a class, use of exceptions -vs- return codes, etc. (And don't get me started on proper multi-threading techniques.) No offense to CP authors, but much of the code I have downloaded from here suffers from many common problems such as failure to initialize variables. (Please don't take offense to this statement as I am truly glad that people are willing to share their experience and efforts, and I am not an elitist, I make many common mistakes too.) It is often quite easy to determine from the article text how the code will look. More experienced programmers seem to do a better job of articulating what they are trying to do, why and how. I think this has something to do with how many programmers tend to seperate code from reality, and experienced programmers see code as a means to achieve reality. An understanding of reality (or what reality should be) must come first, code is just there to make it happen. So, I am curious. Does anybody think that a business that performs 3rd party code reviews would be useful? Would people pay for it? Obviously, this company would have to prove its credentials to the right people and would need to offer strict confidentiality. One of the functions this company could serve, in addition to code reviews, is concept documentation. I suspect that if an experienced programmer reads someones code and understands it, he/she mught be able to articulate the ultimate design objective in a way that makes sense, better than a rookie programmer might. (I know that in theory a programmer should be able to explain, in detail, what he is writing is supposed to do and support, but reality is often a f
I think it might be useful, IFF they do a proper job. It's better to hire in a consultant, IMO. An example of a company not apparently doing a proper job is Reasoning, Inc[^]. They were in the news last year after performing a 'code review' of various TCP/IP stacks and concluding that Linux had fewer defects. However, reading the reports (follow the Download link, you have to register) it appears that all they do is run
lintacross the codebase - they only pick up the most trivial errors, with no core understanding of the APIs. -
The cost of hiring experienced programmers is a massive factor in my experience. Us old dogs know that experienece is worth every penny, but it isn't always easy to convince those responsible for hiring.