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Data Engineers: Just Do Code Reviews

In Code Complete, Steve McConnell writes: Software testing alone has limited effectiveness — the average defect detection rate is only 25 percent for unit testing, 35 percent for function testing, and 45 percent for integration testing. In contrast, the average effectiveness of design and code inspections are 55 and 60 percent. That was published in 1993. The evidence has only accumulated since. Peer code review is the single most effective defect-removal technique available to software teams. Nothing else — not tests, not CI pipelines, not observability tooling — comes close on a per-hour basis.

Saturday, July 11, 2026 Read
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Don't Go Dark: Visibility Is a Data Engineering Skill

There’s a specific kind of silence in data engineering that I’ve learned to fear. Not the silence of a system that’s working well. Not the comfortable quiet of a team in flow. I mean the silence of a project that’s been running for three weeks and you still can’t point to a single visible thing it has produced. The kind of silence where, if your manager stopped you in the hallway and asked “how’s that migration going?”, you’d say “fine” because saying anything more accurate would require explaining things you haven’t fully articulated yet — even to yourself.

Saturday, May 23, 2026 Read