13 Code Review Standards Inspired by Google

How to excel at code reviews

Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash

In this article, we will briefly go through 13 code review standards that could dramatically help improve the health of your software as well as keep your developers happy.

As the name suggests, code review is a process where one or more developers review or screen the code written by another developer (the author) to ensure that:

• the code does not have any mistakes, and there are no bugs or issues
• it meets all the quality and styling guide requirements and standards
• the code does what it is intended to do
• when merged, it will leave the health of the codebase in a better state

This is why code review is a critical part of software development. The code reviewer is acting as the gatekeeper who decides whether the code is in a state to be part of the codebase and reach production.

Google is known for its technological excellence, and they have effective code review standards that seem to highlight some vital points to keep in mind when reviewing code. At Google,

“The primary purpose of code review is to make sure that the overall code health of Google’s code base is improving over time.” — Google’s Engineering Practices documentation

Here is a list of things to keep in mind when you are reviewing a change list (pull request).

Code Review Standards

1. The code improves the overall health of the system

Every change list (pull request) improves the overall health of the system. The idea is that as a result of such small improvements, the health of the software or codebase will improve after every merge.

2. Quick code reviews, responses, and feedback

First and foremost, do not delay pushing (merging) better code. Don’t expect the code to be perfect. If it’s in a condition that improves the overall health of the system, then ship it.