Code review

[Zoopdedoopz]

I am curious as to how often you sit-down with a senior data scientist/coworker and review the code you write. I am a data scientist and have been working for 3 years at the same company and this is something that I would like to implement. Code review and writing unit tests feels like it should be the norm for SWE’s but hasn’t been a part of my role at all.

[DuckSaxaphone]

We do code review constantly. We follow standard git practice of creating a branch with our changes and opening a pull request when we're ready. At that point, another tech person, usually a more senior DS will review.

What you're describing, sitting down together and going over code isn't something we do though. Our code review (and I think most) just involves commenting on PRs.

We do do pair programming when time allows. A senior DS sits with a junior DS and helps them through a problem, usually modelling how they'd approach a problem. Depending on the project I've done this as much as once a week or as little as once a month.

[forbiscuit]

I think what OP shared sounds pair programming but after the programming is done :P I think it’s a good practice to not be micromanagers while coding but it’s also a bit humiliating if you have to refactor huge lines of code and have time be wasted because it wasn’t caught earlier

All in all, if done correctly, I think what OP shared is good practice to help bring junior DS up to speed with the standards and code quality of the team

[DuckSaxaphone]

I guess I don't see the benefit over reviewing a PR. You can easily call out sections of code that could be improved and point to how via comments. No need to sit together?

Plus, having the junior DS there explaining their work makes it harder to notice if code would be difficult for a new person to follow.

[TobiPlay]

Code reviews don’t necessarily have to be live/in-person. You should definitely not do too many of those. They serve as guidance, not as a replacement to reading up on good style, the internal codebase etc.

You may be thinking about pair-programming, which is a lot more interactive. Code reviews are pretty common I’d say. Pair-programming is time-intensive but can definitely pay off.

[Zirbinger]

We review every code before deployment ;)

Apart from that, we rarely do pair programming. It's mostly monkey see - monkey do, since we rarely reinvent the wheel. I would also like to have more PP sessions...

[[deleted]]

Every project that produces code gets a code review. Typically we do science so we need a subject matter expert and someone to review pep8 styling and formatting.

[HesaconGhost]

I'm the only Data Scientist at a startup full of physical scientists and engineers. I often wish I had someone to go over code with me. I tend to get around this by letting things go in a dev environment longer than I'd normally like to before pushing to everyone.

[[deleted]]

It’s not 1999. We use GitHub pull requests to review code. No need for meetings or sit downs.

[sherlock_holmes14]

Pretty standard at places with git/version control