Value of Evidence

Code reviews can serve as a great educational tool.

More likely, they will just fall somewhere between an enlightening experience and pointless discussion.

You may hear things like “that’s not a good idea” or “this is not efficient.” And you will most likely be hearing them with absolutely no evidence at all.

If during code reviews, it seems like people are walking all over you or any other type of collaborative effort within your team or company, then evidence is your friend. If you’re trying to make any kind of argument about almost anything, then evidence is the key.

Evidence will help you to win arguments, to gain respect, leadership roles, and career advancement.

Perhaps you think your team’s use of global variables is hurting the team? Don’t argue, prove it.

And when I say “prove,” I don’t mean sharing a blog post on the evils of global variables and making an appeal to authority. I mean go and find actual modules in your code with and without global variables and compare those against the incident rate of production issues, JIRA tickets or something similar.

An ability to write code can ensure a lucrative career. But, the ability to write code and use evidence to make strong technical and business cases for paths of action can ensure a meteoric career.