I want to help people get code reviews
Hi everyone,
For the last 6 months, I’ve been working full-time on a startup I founded with some friends. One of the hard parts of the experience has been that I don’t have more experienced engineers to mentor me. I feel like I’m running into a wall in my growth as a developer. I realized that a lot of other people are probably in a similar situation.
To try to address this, I’m building Antcode. It’s a community where developers help one another improve by reviewing each other’s code. I know that imposter syndrome is a real problem among developers and that asking for help or feedback is scary. By making code reviews more accessible, and building a supportive community around that, I’m hoping we can encourage people to get over that fear so that they can get better.
I wrote a longer blog post about the experiences I had which led me to start Antcode, which you can read here.
If you want to learn more about Antcode, here is the landing page.
I’d love to hear what you think so please comment or shoot me a note at makoto@antcode.dev
Thanks everyone!
Love the article and Antcode seems like a super interesting concept, well done! Indeed PR reviews are one of the most important functions within a dev team and are rarely done properly. All the best!
It is great to know that there are other people that code reviews can be better. Thank you!
Very interesting - signup ;)
Thank you so much! It means a lot to us.
An interesting project for sure. Question is how to monetize it to keep up with the costs at least. There is also a nice channel on the Reactiflux Discord regarding code reviews:
#code-reviewYeah, monetization is something I definitely have to figure it out. I have some ideas, but very unclear. As much as I want to help other developers better, I need to live at the same time haha I just joined the community. Thank you for letting me know!
Just FYI, there is https://codereview.stackexchange.com. Maybe you learn something from it, since it has some problems. For example:
Great! Thank you for pointing out the problems of the forum. I didn't look into too much, but will definitely look into it. I've also found a subreddit that tries to do a similar thing. Both of them are not that active communities mainly because I think the platform is not built for that purpose, and the community was not guided properly. As StackOverflow has a pretty strict process of posting questions and answers, the platform has to have some sort of system to keep the quality high. I'll try to learn more from the existing platform.
Nice idea to cover the code review. I have seen things like this before on HN, maybe it was you or someone else.
I think there should be something more in it for the reviewer though, why are they working for free?
The only reason for a coder to do this would be to upskill on code reviewing themselves, which would be cool, but if your startup is relying on these code reviews, just pay someone who is good.
Thank you for your comment! I didn't post on HN, so it's good to know what someone else also had a similar idea.
I think the concern about the incentives for reviewers is legitimate. I've been asked the same question before, and I haven't found the answer yet. I hope that engaging on this platform helps reviewers to upskill, but also show their skill/knowledge as a coder. It might be helpful when a person is trying to get a new job or get a freelance job.
I do not see this platform for a startup to solely rely on it. (It would be super cool if it happens!) If startups use, it would be something they would use to make sure their design decision does not have an unexpected downside effect in the future.
Hey Makoto, I was looking for peer-review from developers for my Python/React, non-trivial tech product, dwata.com. I Tweeted about it and a friend reached out and spent some time with it. I surely feel that developers need peer-review but I would also suggest you drill down into the problem. Once a company has 2 or more developers they will most probably not do reviews outside the company. That is what I have seen myself in previous companies. Currently I am a solo founder so I need review at this stage. But can you build a long-term sustainable business out of this?
Edit:
For context here is the open core of my product - https://github.com/brainless/dwata
It is a good point that we need to drill down the problem. There are many types of people who wish who can have code reviews on their work, but we cannot satisfy everyone. I'll spend some time thinking about it, thanks!
If you need someone to review your code, feel free to reach out to me. I'm happy to help!
Hey that would be lovely if you could take out say 30 minutes? Please let me know if you wanna have a call before so I can give a short overview. Link to repository is in the previous comment. Thank you so much.
That sounds good to me! I'm happy to hop on a call. You can contact me at makoto@antcode.dev.
I don't have a personal need for this, but if you need anyone to do code reviews for React, Rails, Javascript, or Python, let me know, love to see stuff like this.
Thank you! It is great to know that there are people willing to help other developers :)
Have a bit more to add:
To get early code reviewers either do it yourself, or bootcamp grads are really good to go after b/c they're always looking for ways to improve. Specifically collaboration and reviewing code is something they aren't exposed to. Anyone who also mentors bootcamps is often much more generous with their time for things that help people starting out. Find them on Linkedin.
I like the blog post but there's better topics to cover for content marketing purposes. Resonant, underserved, and tractable. Topics that evoke emotional response. Here's a few off the top of my head: "Job Searching for your first job", "Salary Negotiation", "Leetcode", "System Design", "Work-Life balance", are topics that you can write about that your target market would love to read.
More specific topics are "Javascript Build Pipeline", "How to deal with a slow vpn", "How to deal with a shitty manager", etc.
Also you need to be collecting emails, get a mailchimp account (it's free dw) and plug that into the bottom of your blog posts.
Your point about bootcamps is really a great one. Although I was a CS major, I also did a bootcamp one summer and I had no internship experience in college. Coding review was a new concept for me when I started working, and that is a part of the reasons I was so impressed with it.
Thank you for the suggestions for blog posts. I was actually struggling to narrow down the targets and come out with appropriate content for them. Your suggestions gave me some ideas.
I'm relatively new to IndieHacker, but I'm impressed with the amount of help I can get in this community, so thanks to you! It really means a lot especially when I'm trying to start a new thing.
Feel free to reach out if you need any info on job search in software engineering or u want to know the recruiter side of things, I've deep dived into the field bc I was making a job board (among other things) so I have a lot of notes about it.
Also be happy to peer review blog posts and such or if you want me to post on the FB groups so you don't get rejected for self promo
I have more readings if you want:
Microconf on YouTube
Patrick McKenzie
Anything for dev related content, look on what went viral on hacker news, plug in keywords to hacker news search tool
Adam wathan, Nathan barry for content marketing
Rand fishkin, Neil Patel, and Rob walling for general growth and marketing
Hmm oh yeah also the virality mechanisms in hacker news and IH are not that great compared to subtle asian networking and subtle asian tech fb groups.
This might be too much information, but you should think about testing positioning too, not a lot of people spend an obscene amount of money in dev education, but b2b dev tools, and job search omg it's insane. Like just do a light test on a bootcamp fb group or a new grad fb group and say, this tool can be another thing for you to get real world experience and another thing you can put on your resume (this is pretty important, they can be very insecure about resumes) and see if ppl pay you for it. They probably will.
Thank you so much! I definitely have to spend more time to go through each resource you provided. It would be super great if I can contact you in the future. You seem to have lots of insights! If you don't mind me asking, what is the best way to contact you?
Again, I appreciate your support!
For sure, email me at catsarebetter98@gmail.com, let's connect, I really like the startup you're team is doing.
Sweet! Thank you!
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Thank you! I've been on the same boat, so I know how you feel! Your request for reviews on the overall structure of a codebase is really helpful. I have been getting the same requests from multiple people, so I think there is definitely need for it. We will think about it as we built!
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I would imagine the email address is to capture leads and also serves as validation. Which businesses don't capture emails these days?
Your point on GDPR would be more helpful if you included why it's not compliant and how to make it compliant.
Let's be helpful to one in another, we are all trying to 'make it'.
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I think it contributes to interest. I browse a lot of sites, if I'm not interested, I leave. But on the other hand, I'll leave my email if I'm interested in whatever product or service.
Good info in the GDPR.
Interesting. If you need someone to bounce some initial thoughts off of, feel free to dm me on twitter.
Hey! Saw you said "I'm trying to explore the possibilities of operating apps without collecting the normal barrage of PII - including email addresses."
That's exactly what I will be doing in my products. Totally anonymous accounts without even requiring email address. We can chat on the subject too. Twitter is the best to stay in touch :)
I would like to receive the notifications in my inbox. I don't mind put my e-mail if is a service that will help me in some way.
How often you use your email address in good faith and you get more than you asked for?
I don't mind, i just flag as spam and my inbox will redirect it all to trash... The bad side of it will happen with the server that sent me the spam...
But, in anonymous login, how can I recover my password or receive notifications?
I really interested in know more about this...
A simple anonymous login system can be username and password & a complex (even more secure) system can be using key pairs just like SSH, but like you said how does the user recover access to their account if you they lose the password or need to receive notifications? That's the UX aspect of it.
So we need an anonymous communication protocol as well to do that kind of transactional communication. But how do you avoid the spam?
RSS private feeds over Tor sounds like a simple solution with existing technologies, but you get the idea.
But what if you never have to recover a password or change password?
Eventually the answer might lie in a password-less, key-pair system in which you don't have to recover the account access at all, as all key pairs are generated deterministically like in a crypto HD wallet from a single phrase of 12/24 words & you simply use the relevant key pair associated with a particular service to sign in.
A breached database doesn't expose any of your info except the public key, which is supposed to be "public" anyway.
Happy to discuss more or you can follow me on Twitter when I get around to do this later this year.
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