Code Review - Where To Start

I really enjoyed reading: What To Look For In A Code Review - it touches on something I do everyday and is a skill I really want to hone.

One of the things I have learnt is code review should never start with looking at what the code does or even how it does it. Take this snippet for example:

There are many things you could comment on:

• The insane mixture of camelCase and underscores
• A curious use of the package-private visibility
• Rather disturbing presence of the Singleton annotation

Whilst all these questions are very valid, without proper context they may prove to be completely redundant! Building up this context is where a code review should start, establish:

• Why is the code needed?
• What is the underlying problem being solved?

This information shouldn't be limited to the code review either, the code should communicate this for any future readers.