Kasia has been trying out code reviews/pair programming at her work and I do tend to agree that code reviews should be done and that they probably result in better code, i.e. code that is less full of bugs We don’t do much code review either at work and after reading her entry it got me thinking that perhaps we should.

When 2 developers at least are working on 2 sides of the same problem I tend to think that pair programming could be very useful. Personally it sometimes does get on my nerves, especially when we are talking about the same thing but thinking about it differently, or there is a subtle difference in what we are actually talking about.

In the end, though it does tend to keep people focused on the task at hand and forces us to quickly work out a solution or pull each others hair out

I’ve been thinking a lot about weblogs recently, having started one of my own. After reading several of them I began to wonder what the general media thinks about them, since they allow people to skirt around the news issues that television and other media consider important, as well as put an honest spin on the important ones. Blogs like kevinsites, salam pax and the agonist are very interesting simply because they try to put an honest and very down-to-earth spin on the popular stories, in essence negating the sense of urgency that TV news anchors exhibit all the time.

I also think about how television and journalism in general might change since blogging essentially allows real people (i.e. non-media personalities) to reach us directly through their blogs. A lot of ordinary people could become celebrities or a lot of media journalists could become obsolete (I don’t think so).

Dan Gillmor posted today that he is writing a book that explores these topics I’m thinking about and a lot more. It’s called “Making the News:
What Happens to Journalism and Society When Every Reader Can Be a Writer”, which I think is a very appropriate title. Indeed, blogging allows every reader to add his or her own comments to any discussion, resulting in a feedback loop which ends up looking not unlike a real discussion or personal talk. He has already got an outline up on his site and it is already a great read, do go and try to skim through it at least.