I can confirm that this is so true. At one place I worked I wasn't allowed to program in C, but did the C code reviews[1].
I was riding in a car with buddies who were much better C programmers than myself and making notes on some code I needed to do the review of the next morning. This is the code pattern that almost crashed our car:
a = some_function(i);
a1 = &a;
a2 = &a1;
calc(a2);
with calc() reversing it out
I was cussing a bit much[2] and front seat passenger had to look then driver got too curious. Sadly, this was the least "wrong" thing about the code. Its very hard to do a code review where you suggest 500 lines of C can be reduced to 50.
1) cannot have the guy doing code reviews actually coding, that would be improper
2) cussing in private allows positive, motivational tone in public
I was riding in a car with buddies who were much better C programmers than myself and making notes on some code I needed to do the review of the next morning. This is the code pattern that almost crashed our car:
with calc() reversing it outI was cussing a bit much[2] and front seat passenger had to look then driver got too curious. Sadly, this was the least "wrong" thing about the code. Its very hard to do a code review where you suggest 500 lines of C can be reduced to 50.
1) cannot have the guy doing code reviews actually coding, that would be improper
2) cussing in private allows positive, motivational tone in public