I have yet to see a code review checklist that I find useful. There are just too many things that can go wrong with software, so the list ends up either too long to be practical, or too generic to be helpful.
What I do find useful is to have a good variety of skills on the review team. Different people tend to check for different things. Some are just naturally good at spotting, say, concurrency problems, others have a pet peeve with names that aren't clear, etc. But someone who doesn't have an eye for concurrency problems won't magically start noticing them in a pile of code because there's a box saying "check for race conditions" somewhere on the list.
Comments
I have yet to see a code review checklist that I find useful. There are just too many things that can go wrong with software, so the list ends up either too long to be practical, or too generic to be helpful.
What I do find useful is to have a good variety of skills on the review team. Different people tend to check for different things. Some are just naturally good at spotting, say, concurrency problems, others have a pet peeve with names that aren't clear, etc. But someone who doesn't have an eye for concurrency problems won't magically start noticing them in a pile of code because there's a box saying "check for race conditions" somewhere on the list.