in reply to Code Review - What Medium?

It all depends on two things:

1. How big the code is.
2. How nice of a day it is outside.

For me, if it meets both of these criteria, I print them out, grab a pen, a can of chewing tobacco and head outside to enjoy two of my favorite things: code and nature.

For me, sometimes it's easier to get out of the computer for a bit... I'd say personal preference

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Re^2: Code Review - What Medium?
by jhourcle (Prior) on Jun 01, 2005 at 03:04 UTC

    I like pens, but I use lots of pens, as I tend to make notes in more than just one color.

    For me, it depends more on just what it is that I'm trying to review than anything else. I try to keep to the whole paperless office thing, but I find that printouts are useful when trying to trace the logic flow through large programs, especially those that I didn't write myself.

    I tend to use at least three colors -- typically, I'll go through once, and try to reduce out that stuff that's not important (scratch it out in black, as I find it's less obtrusive), and make marks in the margin using blue to track where important sections are, and red wherever I think there might be problems.

    There's not really any firm rules on the colors, though... if I have a highlighter, or a green pen, I might use some other marks of interest. Sometimes, I'll just use question marks to mark sections that I'm unsure of, and arrows to mark other stuff I want to come back to review again.

    I do agree that sometimes it's easier to look at paper copies, rather than staring at a computer screen... especially when you get to that point where your mind is swimming, and the letters seem like they're trying to crawl about the screen.

    I don't tend to go outside, as I also make heavy use a white board to keep track of entering/exiting objects, subroutines, or whatever. (and I don't chew tobacco... I much prefer large doses of sugar and caffeine)