Hacker News Reader

Comment by some_furry | Hacker News Reader

> During the first 60 minutes of code review of the day, the reviewer finds roughly one defect per ten minutes of reviewing – as long as they review less than about 50 lines of code per ten minutes.

Oh.

It normally takes me a few seconds to find bugs in code.

I always felt this was average performance for assessing software. If the average time is ten minutes per defect, I need to recalibrate my expectations for myself.

View on HN

It really depends on the code. To find a CSS bug, yes easy peasy. To find a logic hole in a payment integration of what someone has missed or should have implemented but didn't (eg webhooks), then this requires a lot more time and the developer basically has to sit down properly to work out exactly what should have been implemented / how they would have developed it, and then cross-check it against what has been done, otherwise you won't be able to easily find those logical holes which effectively are bugs, just not simple code bugs like a missing semicolon.

My day job is auditing cryptography. I'd probably be slower to find the root cause of a CSS bug than most of the folks that read HN. :3

Presumably you understand that how long it takes to find bugs in code depends on the code. If not, then I hope you've read the code for Linux and SSL, etc.

Yes, of course it depends a lot on context.

I've never had an incentive to read the Linux kernel code. I routinely find and disclosed cryptography library bugs, though usually mostly hobby projects like the "I thought it would be cool if there was a PHP implementation of GHASH" sort rather than like OpenSSL.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com