Awesome Code Review
A curated list of tools, articles, books, and any other resource related to code review
Code review is the systematic examination (sometimes referred to as peer review) of computer source code.
Contents
- Awesome Code Review
- Contents
- Academic Papers
- Articles
- Books
- Talks and Podcasts
- Tools
- Contribute
- License
Academic Papers
- An experiment to assess the cost-benefits of code inspections in large scale software development (Porter, Siy, Toman & Votta, 1997) Early paper that tested a range of then-current review techniques including multi-stage review and code-review-via-meeting that found you can get most of the benefit in an offline, single pass, with two reviewers.
- Anywhere, anytime code inspections: using the Web to remove inspection bottlenecks in large-scale software development (Perpich, Perry, Porter, Votta & Wade, 1997) One day in the far future the best way to review code will be on the world wide web.
- Characteristics of Useful Code Reviews: An Empirical Study at Microsoft (Bosu, Greiler, Bird, 2015) This paper reports the findings of a large scale qualitative and quantitative study focusing on understanding which code review comments are considered useful by developers.
- Code Reviewing in the Trenches: Understanding Challenges, Best Practices, and Tool Needs (MacLeod, Greiler, Storey, Bird, Czerwonka, 2018) A large scale study of over 900 Microsoft developers to understand their code review processes, their motivations to do code reviews, and which pitfalls and best practices they encounter.
- Design and Code Inspections to Reduce Errors in Program Development (Fagan, 2002) Using a more formal process, particularly with defined roles for each participant and drive a big increase in error detection during review.
- Helping Developers Help Themselves: Automatic Decomposition of Code Review Changes (Barnett et al. 2015) (summary on the morning paper) Research into automatically splitting big diffs into smaller diffs leading to better reviews.
- Modern Code Review: A Case Study at Google A study that shows how code reviews work at Google.
- Work Practices and Challenges in Pull-Based Development (Gousios et al. 2015) (summary on the morning paper) Field study of how GitHub pull requests are used in the wild.
Articles
- 8 Tips for Great Code Reviews A few basic rules for a better code review process.
- A Better Code Review Decent set of patterns and anti-patterns for code reviews.
- A Zen Manifesto for Effective Code Reviews Practical tips for the submitter and the reviewer to make effective code reviews.
- Brian Guthrie's Feature Branching Rant Twitter thread on the pros and cons of GitHub's open source first model with regards to "in-company" code review practice.
- Building an Inclusive Code Review Culture Guidelines to help ensure a collaborative and learning culture
- Code Review: Create The Culture, Learn The Best Practices Code review tips and best practices from tech leaders.
- Code Review Etiquette A few tips helping with positive engagement on code review.
- Code Review Guidelines for Humans Some guidelines for giving and getting code reviews.
- Code Reviews: Just Do It Seminal post advocating for peer review of software back in 2006.