Code review platform: Like Stack Overflow but for getting feedback on your code
My friend/co-founder/partner-in-crime are nomading around building a bootstrapped SaaS business. From working at other companies, we know that quality code reviews are immensely helpful. But right now, we can't get them. There's just the two of us building this product, and we review one another's code, but our knowledge is limited. We would love to have other developers take a look and give us feedback.
We would like to believe that we are not the only ones with this problem.
We are considering building a platform where you can share your code and other people would review it. (And you could also review other people's code). This wouldn't be a paid, code-review-as-a-service platform (like PullRequest). Instead, it would be like Stack Overflow where hackers just help one another out. Similar to Stack Overflow, reading reviews of other people's code could also help you learn best practices for different languages, frameworks, etc.
There is already a Code Review Stack Exchange page (https://codereview.stackexchange.com/) but it is for getting help debugging. The platform we're imagining would be to make already functional code better (like what happens in companies).
There's also already a code review subreddit (r/codereview) with some activity. But it consists of people sharing links to their whole repos. In the platform we're imagining, the code reviews could be performed, and they would be viewable, within the platform itself.
Questions for you:
Do you also want code reviews but don't have a way to get them?
And if a product like this existed, would you use it?
We'd really appreciate your feedback on this idea!
Thanks everyone,
Otto
Code Review in StackExchange has been extremely useful to me, I don't think I would pay for it. Maybe someone just entering the industry would pay to learn best practices or get feedback.
I like the idea. I am not in the target market as I work in a team and just use Github though so can't comment too much about "would I buy it".
A potential set of users is the self-taught coder who is freelancing.
Is the code reviewer getting paid or doing it for free?
At first at least, there wouldn't be any money transacted on the platform. Our belief is that just like some people enjoy answering questions on Stack Overflow, some people enjoy reviewing other people's code. Plus, PullRequest is already building a code-review-as-a-service platform.
Thanks. If you build this I am happy to use it both as a reviewer and a reviewee. It'll be fun to try out. Email is in my profile - you can add it to your launch list or whatever you have.
Thanks Martin! We appreciate it :)
I've been dwelling on such idea for quite a long for quite some time and I'm interested in joining you guys in this project if you need any help
I think the main problem you would encounter with this sort of process is that code, even just a certain snippet, can give away an aweful lot about a a company and its sensitive approach to the solution. But with this platform you'd be essentially open sourcing your code.
Maybe a non disclosure as part of the sign up but then how do you truly prove it's not a competitor and how do you enforce it?
You've hit the nail on the head -- that would be an obstacle to getting people to share their code.
If you need to keep your code private, this likely means you're working for a company. If you're working at a company with at least 5 or 10 devs, you probably already have internal code reviews, so you wouldn't need a service like this.
What if your company is too small for code reviews and the code that you're working on is private? For instance if you're a dev at an early-stage startup or a freelancer. Then you could benefit from this platform but you couldn't use it. Devs like this would be "missing" users.
I think to start, our aim would be hackers, so people who are working on open source projects or projects that they don't mind putting out into the open source realm. I think that are enough people who fit this description that the platform could be viable, at least for an "indie" project.
I would love this and would pay a subscription. If it were more productive/positive than SO I'd be fairly active in the community both asking for review and reviewing. I'm a self taught dev and constantly living with imposter syndrome and worrying I've overlooked something that would be obvious to a Comp. Sci.
Hey Lakebed_io,
I'm a dev bootcamp graduate so I feel the imposter syndrome when comparing yourself to Comp. Sci. folks. The more you work with those types, the less and less you'll feel that. Most of them come out of school with this really theoretical vantage and oftentimes produce pretty shit code!
You should check out /r/codereview on Reddit. Lots of people sharing and reviewing each other's code. Whenever there's some Typescript posts, I try and review it, and the community is really great and supportive.
I'm working on a code review tool as well actually. From my experience working my way up from a jr. dev, CRs can oftentimes be super stressful, embarrassing, and sometimes really hard to take learnings away from.
Would love to get your thoughts!
I wish I could support your code review tool. I'm now in the middle of moving from Canada to Wales for my wife's new job; that has to take all of my focus for at least the rest of 2022.
Good luck!!! That's exciting!!!
We hadn't considered that for self-taught devs something like this could be especially valuable. Thanks for that insight!