Code review service

Concerned about code quality on that iOS app you got coded overseas, or by your company’s newest iPhone developer? Considering purchasing an app and worried you might buy badly coded junk that will cost a fortune to maintain and upgrade?

Did iOS code review and Apple UI review for the State Farm Pocket Agent app

Poor code architecture can be extremely expensive in the long run. Get a code review from an expert iOS code reviewer to quickly find out whether your software developer did a good job of programming or saddled your app with technical debt.

My decades of experience doing Apple software development at every stage of project life cycles mean I know which issues matter most in the long run, what you can let slide, and what should be fixed now to minimize project cost.

What is iOS code review and what can it do?

MetaTheory’s code review service is an overview look at your code to catch major problems.

iOS code review will find issues such as poor organization, nonstandard naming conventions, large numbers of unused files that cause technical debt.

Code review service is not for source code check-in

Some companies do peer-to-peer code review when a developer checks code into source code control. This is not that kind of code review.

Software code review is NOT debugging

With software programming, the devil is in the details.

The types of code review I do will catch large-scale, systemic problems in your software project.

Code review usually WON’T catch individual glitches and bugs in the code. For that, you need debugging services.

What you get from a code review

With expert code review, you get reassurance that yes, your software app’s code is in reasonable shape… or knowledge that someone was programming too hastily.

When code review is useful and cost-effective

Code review is generally useful when you are bringing code in-house.

  1. You are considering purchasing an app, but are concerned about the code quality. The more expensive the app and the longer its projected life cycle, the more likely that code review will be cost effective.
  2. You had your iOS app coded overseas and have concerns about code quality and technical debt.
  3. Your iOS mobile app was coded by your company’s newest iPhone developer, and you want to find out how good a job they did, so you can fix any significant problems before the next rev.
  4. You want to know how easily you can localize an app for another language.
  5. You want to halt development on an app in a state that will make it easy to resume development later.

iOS code review services

As a code reviewer, I can review your Xcode app’s source code at two levels of granularity:

  1. High-level code reviews can usually be done in about 4 hours, depending on the size of your project.
  2. Code-level reviews take significantly longer because of the level of detail.

I can review code for both Apple iOS apps and Mac OS X.

High-level code review

This type of software code review asks, “How well organized is your project?”

  • To what degree are related items grouped together?
  • Are items organized into proper folder hierarchies?
  • Are naming conventions used?

Project organization affects your code’s robustness or fragility, and has a huge effect on maintenance and upgrade costs:

  • Large flat projects are a technical debt nightmare.
  • Programs with too much code in any one file are a technical debt nightmare.
  • Unused files still in the project can range from small to great technical debt.

Code-level review

Code-level review also looks at

  • What is your app’s code quality in general?
  • How much dead code is in your project?

Remember, iOS code review is not debugging, and usually won’t catch bug-level problems.

Prepping for your code review:

Format your Objective-C code using Uncrustify Code Beautifier, available from Sourceforge.net. This will make it easier to see what’s going on.

When we get on the phone, I’ll want to know:

  • How many compiler warnings does your app generate? It’s important to have less than a screen full so you can see new warnings. Zero warnings is a good target.
  • When you build with Analyze in Xcode, how many potential memory leaks get found?
  • How many programmers were on the project, for what duration? (This helps me estimate how big a can of worms I’m jumping into, and how long code review services are likely to take.)
  • Was this the first app someone wrote? (If yes, the code is more likely to include nonstandard implementation.)
  • Are the original programmers available for quick phone consultations? If not, be prepared for me to pay the learning curve to understand your software. That takes time and attention, and there is no way around it.

The right code review service can save your company time and money. Get an expert opinion on code quality; spot problems and technical debt right away.

Ready to take action on your software?

Call one of the top app development companies

.
.
.