Cognitive Biases in Software Development

Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development by Ididntdothis on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @10:25AM (#22737803)

That’s why pair programming works better than code reviews. Unless you have crazy amounts of time there is almost no chance a code reviewer can really understand the design of the change. So you end up with people picking on very local stuff like variable names. With pair programming you have two people who understand the history of the code and why decisions have been made.

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Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development by C4stor on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @11:07AM (#22738214)

But seriously, naming things correctly makes understanding the global system so much easier.

The whole point of naming things is that you don't have to dive in this 60 LoC function, but rather can use its name to know what it does, and make a global mental model.

If you're not naming things correctly, you effectively make it almost impossible to review the design, and that's why people starts with asking about names.

Reviewing names is the exact opposite of picking local stuff. Names have no importance locally, but they have tremendous one globally.

So, please, use good names ^^

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Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development by Ididntdothis on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @11:11AM (#22738257)

Totally agree about the importance of naming. But the big problems that are hard to fix later come usually from design flaws, not from naming and often are overlooked in reviews.

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Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development by C4stor on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @12:55PM (#22739573)

I agree with you. My point, if it wans't clrear, is that I think correct naming is a prerequisite to finding design flaws in review ! Hence we have the same ultimate goal :-)

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Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development by bpyne on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @01:44PM (#22740179)

I don't find that to be the case. I'm usually looking for bigger things like: 1. making multiple trips to a relational database when a single statement joining tables can make it one trip; 2. not handling exceptions that can cause data loss or data corruption.

(I'm not trying to be exhaustive. The examples above are common ones I've seen regularly and they make me cringe.)

I don't need to know the variable names used in these cases. The very act of not using a relational database properly or not handling exceptions is easy to spot.

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Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development by closeparen on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @12:52PM (#22739530)

That doesn’t sound right. How big are the changes you’re reviewing?

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Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development by Ididntdothis on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @01:15PM (#22739810)

Sometimes small and easy, sometimes big and impacting the whole system. Generally small changes are preferred but that’s not always possible.

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Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development by closeparen on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @01:37PM (#22740093)

We generally review anywhere from 50 to 300 lines per diff. An unfamiliar reader may not be able to anticipate spooky action at a distance in other parts of the codebase, but a good design doesn’t permit much of that anyway. The reader can certainly understand what’s going on in the change, and if they don’t they shouldn’t approve it.

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Re:Cognitive Biases in Software Development by Ididntdothis on Tuesday March 31, 2020 @01:51PM (#22740289)

Some of our changes are bigger if they touch several systems. You have to have very good knowledge of each system to make an assessment of the impact of the change. And nobody has time to really look into this. You don’t get much credit for code review on the scrum board.

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