Re: How do you critique another person's code?

[ellem]

I can empathize with the writer of this absolutely bizarre code; but only because I was recently singled out in a meeting as an example of "The Way Not To Do It".
My bosses specific complaint was that my Perl code was too "boring", "obvious", "clear", "over commented", and "cautious". (I'm a Sys Admin not a programmer by profession.) Anylou...
My code was displayed on a wall and my boss basically showed everyone why he didn't like this and that. One of the programmers did stick up for me and say that he could go into that code at anytime and work on it, and that was good, but mostly folks just ripped on me.
It did nothing to my style... I still code the same basic way (although I do REM out use diagnostics ; now.)
Just be very specific. And definitely make sure to make a point about that commenting style: That junk is fine for a homepage hosted on a personal computer but has no business in the real world.
--
[e-mail]
There's more than one way to do it, just don't use my way.

[vladb]

Ellem, I can hardly believe your boss could do such a thing!? I remember myself at a few code reviews for my perl programs, and even that was a little tense. I later came to terms with the idea of code reviews and saw their impact as to the 'betterment' of my code.

However, your boss just scolded you right there!

I think that if your code was indeed "obvious", "clear", "over commented", and (above all) "cautious", then I'd step in and support it. Clearly, these are the qualities that do not hurt one's code but rather make it maintainable and less bug-prone.

PS: I'm absolutely with you on your commnet about "that junk".



"There is no system but GNU, and Linux is one of its kernels." -- Confession of Faith

[archen]

Do you like your job? Not to be a smart-ass, but this sounds really bad to me. ESPECIALLY other people going along with it. Now the other stuff is up to your boss I guess, but I find the "over commented" part hard to swallow. I mean comments are what allow people to easily look at code without thinking "what was the guy who wrote this trying to do". To me this all sounds like a formula for disaster down the road. I'm not sure I'd be too particular on a boss ripping my code in front of everyone for being too clear either.