Ask HN: How much time do you spend on code reviews?

3 points

11 years ago

I recently published some advice about doing peer code reviews based on my experience managing a development team for the past few years. One of my recommendations is to spend roughly 25% as much time reviewing a given patch as it took to write it.

The most highly rated comment on Reddit, by far, is this one: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/2t7qna/how_to_do_code_reviews_without_wasting_your_time/cnwnac0. To save you the click, he says: "Nope. Lost me right there as unreasonable and impracticable." I've had a bunch of other comments along the same lines. My main argument is that if pair programming (with 100% overhead) makes sense to a lot of people then 25% overhead doing code reviews should be totally realistic.

For those who do code reviews, how much time would you estimate you spend relative to how long it took to write the code? Do you agree with my 25% estimate, or does it seem unnecessary and/or unrealistic? Are there people who think it should be even more?

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