On: Software Engineering at Google

[shaftway]

The way I've described it to people is that you need to get at least one review from someone who...

- is an Owner of the code

- has Readability in the language of the code

- is not you

If you are an owner and have readability, you just need someone who isn't you to sign off on it. If you don't have ownership or readability you need to get someone who has those things to sign off. If you can find someone who has both, great. Otherwise you'll need two people.

Having readability in a language can make you pretty desirable, particularly if it's in a language that your team doesn't often use. It's hard to get, and it takes time. My team is pure Java, but once in a long while we check in Python scripts. Most people have Java readability, but I'm one of two people on the team with Python, which makes me more valuable to the team.

It's really hard to get someone who isn't on your team to give you a readability review.

[thedance → shaftway]

Definitely. Being an SRE with C++ readability, for example, is like a permanent employment guarantee.

I'd like to acknowledge the brilliance of people who name their code files "foo.javascript" to avoid having to get JS readability.

[shaftway → thedance]

I'd lump them into the category of people who would make production code depend on things in experimental to get around code reviews.

[thedance → shaftway]

I’m pretty sure that will trigger reviewed-and-submitted code audits for any role that handles PII. Don’t want the HN-reading public to get the wrong impression.