Code reviews at Google
thebogles.com
thebogles.com
You mean like its approximately two 8s uptime? :P I do think you're spot on about how Mondrian encourages the nit-picking and doesn't do enough to encourage structural discussions. On the other hand, maybe those discussions should be had before there's any code to review. So . . . meh. Tough problem.
Another nice feature of that is that if parts of the design discussion pertain to particular features in the code, you can attach them as such, so that the code is automatically quoted in the e-mail thread.
All I'm saying is that it seemed to make a difference how I initiated things.
Another nice feature of that is that if parts of the design discussion pertain to particular features in the code, you can attach them as such, so that the code is automatically quoted in the e-mail thread.
That sounds like either a new feature of Mondrian (it's been 2 years since I was at Google) or one that I simply hadn't discovered (I never completely mastered Mondrian or the code review process when I was there.)
Anyway, my larger point is that at Google there seemed to be a tendency to always default into a low-level line-by-line code review unless I took explicit steps to point the code review into a different direction. I saw a similar tendency at Mozilla. YMMV, of course.
The one aspect I missed at Google compared to other large software companies was design document reviews. I found that in writing and disseminating such documents a lot of good work was done.
I wonder if this part of Mondrian has been improved since I was at Google. There was a freeform area, but it wasn't really good for much, as I recall.
edit:
kiln: http://www.fogcreek.com/Kiln/StudentAndStartup.html
Better yet sign up for fogbugz and add kiln on to fogbugz:
I work with people around the world on software -- including people I've never met who decide to contribute a change (which enters the same workflow as a project lead). It's just awesome.