Show HN: Code reviews intimidated me, so I built a course on how to master them
It’s a video course with 4+ hours of content [1]. I’ve linked a 21-minute sample below [2].
6 years ago, I began my software engineering career at Amazon Web Services. I struggled with Pull Requests. My authored PRs received many comments, sometimes 50+. They went through many revisions, sometimes 7+. I often shipped late. My reviews of other PRs were surface level and counterproductive.
Long story short: I improved. Through trial, error and experience I learned how to be effective in all 3 dimensions of code reviews: process, reviewer, and author.
I came to realize that there isn’t much information out there, giving developers actionable guidance to succeed in a code review environment. Doing so takes specific soft skills, social skills, and technical skills. Very few people talk about them.
Late 2020, I started writing about code reviews on my Medium, Twitter [3] and LinkedIn. I grew from 0 to almost 17K followers across platforms. The internet held me accountable for ambiguities and inaccuracies of my public writing. I learned a lot, and leveraged both positive and negative feedback to refine my ideas.
My writing experience gave me the confidence to build the course. I created it for my younger self, and I hope developers everywhere find it useful.
I launched it a month ago. So far there have been more than 650 students. I’ve received positive feedback from senior managers and principal engineers across big tech.
Happy to answer questions!
[1] Course: https://curtiseinsmann.gumroad.com/l/code-review-course
[2] Sample video — Writing effective code review comments: https://app.gumroad.com/s/90c67f7093db4dd0d544187b0a29bccf/vcisZ5CTogObOj95pBKvHQ==
[3] Example Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/curtiseinsmann/status/1317149417330364421?s=20&t=q4gYZPN4BhXDrHtcTTiHmA