# What Are Code Reviews and How to Do Them Effectively

DevFeed: [What Are Code Reviews and How to Do Them Effectively](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/what-are-code-reviews-and-how-to-do-them-effectively-24929.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://codeahoy.com/2016/04/03/effective-code-reviews/>)

Author: umer

Published: 2016-04-03T00:00:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Code Ahoy - Articles](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/code-ahoy-articles.md>)

Topics: [Code review](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code-review.md>), [Code quality](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code-quality.md>), [engineering-culture](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/engineering-culture.md>), [test-coverage](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/test-coverage.md>)

Tags: [code-quality](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code-quality.md>), [code-reviews](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code-reviews.md>), [coding](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/coding.md>), [how-to](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/how-to.md>), [mentoring](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mentoring.md>), [test-coverage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/test-coverage.md>)

## AI overview

This article explains what code reviews are, what reviewers should examine, and how reviews can improve code quality and share knowledge across development teams.

## Source excerpt

What is Code Review? Code review is the process or rather an activity in which code written by a developer is inspected by other developers to look for defects and improvements. In other words, developers work on their code and ask for one of their peers to review their changes before they are merged into the main codebase. In the last few years, code reviews have become part of normal workflow for large and small teams, ensuring that every change gets looked by at by least one other person. They are an integral part of almost every large company like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to name a few, where every line of code is reviewed and approved by developers before it is merged into the main codebase. What To Look For in Code Reviews It varies from team to team, but generally, a code reviewer should consider the following: Does the code meet the requirements that it's addressing? Does it do what the developer intended it to do? Does the overall design makes sense and fit with the rest of the architecture? Are there general defects like race conditions (for concurrent code), edge cases, and other bugs that users might encounter? Is the code readable and maintainable? Are future developers likely to struggle to understand what's going on? Is it more complex than it needs to be? Does the code have appropriate Test coverage? (Unit, Integration, or End to End tests) Does the code adhere to your coding standards or style? This includes things like naming, comments, etc. Note: Automate style-checking as much as possible. Why do Code Reviews? Code reviews take time: the change is held up until it is reviewed by usually 2 people. So why do it? When done correctly, code review is a proven technique that helps improve code quality and spread core knowledge across the team. It forces developers to hold themselves to a higher standard because they know that their code will be reviewed by their peers. It's also a great tool for mentoring new team members on nuances of the code ba