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A comment on Why code review beats testing: evidence from decades of programming research.

Re:Why code review beats testing: evidence from decades of p... by Tommabeeng on Tuesday October 04, 2011 @08:07PM (#3073578)
It should be noted that code reviews, though useful for catching defects, are incredibly expensive.

I think there are cheaper ways -- along the lines of automated testing and design reviews in lieu of code reviews -- to reduce risk and defects, and obtain high quality software, than to spend such massive time/$ on code reviews.

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Re:Why code review beats testing: evidence from decades of p... by HeyLaughingBoy on Wednesday October 05, 2011 @03:13PM (#3077076)
They are, but having users find them is even more so.

We use design reviews, code reviews, unit tests, integration tests and final validation tests. Our bug rate is well below 1/kloc, but bugs still get out the door.

In the end it depends on how you calculate Cost of Quality. In some environments, having a customer experience a bug can have disastrous consequences, in others it's not a big deal at all. We're in the former category :-(

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