Would you use code-review-as-a-service? | Hacker News Reader

Would you use code-review-as-a-service?

paidcodereview.com

12 pointsderwiki17 comments

I most definitely would. I was searching for this kind of service in the past. The closest is http://codereview.stackexchange.com/ but the problem is that we cannot make frequent changes and ask for more feedback. Also, we cannot submit an entire project and try to get feedback.

Just an idea for you: Make the service an integral part of a system that customers can use themselves with or without your additional help. You could start the business model with more of a contracted service approach but eventually transition to a hybrid human resource + SAAS model.

Code review is something that many organizations need some bootstrapping on and perhaps some periodic mentoring, but at some point I think they want to be able to wean themselves off of relying on an outside contracted service for something that will be used so often.

Good luck.

Reminds me of http://www.sergioschuler.com/startup-lessons-learned-from-my.... Test the waters before you give a commitment. Personally, I would like to see what the review includes (syntax, tests, patterns?)

I did basically what Sergio did with CameraLends.com last year. I've learned from that and want to "date around" before committing to an idea this time ;-)

I want to sign up as a reviewer, but couldn't figure out how on the mobile iOS version of the page. I put in my email but that didn't clear it up either. Will try it later on a laptop, but just FYI!

Nope that's it. I currently don't have a way to differentiate "I'm interested in having code reviewed" vs "I'm interested in becoming an expert." I plan to send a follow-up Google Survey to everyone who signed up to get a better sense of who's interested in this service.

I know this can come off as shameless self promotion and this site is just a landing page and signup form in it's present state. I recently quit my day job to try to work on my own projects, and this time around I'd rather get early feedback before really even building an MVP. That said, I do think this would be a useful service and would be happy to build it, if enough people like the idea and would want to use it. I'll be putting on my tough skin now, if anyone has any feedback at all. Thanks!

I would not use this because:

-I can't have my company's source code existing in yet another system. It's already in github and after CircleCI's security failure my desire to have another entry point to source code is very low.

-More importantly: I, and most experienced developers, don't use code review to find simple syntax errors or fix stylistic issues. Code review is a way to socialize your changes and make sure they make sense in the larger system. The code reviewers on a site like this will not understand the larger system with enough to detail to find issues that are not simple syntax errors.

Just my .02

Thanksk for your thoughts! As I mentioned in another response, maybe this is best aimed at coders picking up a new technology (or non-coders becoming coders), similar to AirPair.

Definitely could be a lot of room there. I can't imagine O'Reilly guides are the best way to quickly learn a new language...

This is what I came here to post. I think there are use cases for something like this (learning a new language), but it's going to be really difficult to get this into B2B territory for the reasons you mention. I would focus more on the educational aspect of this, like you get personal feedback from a mentor on how your programming ability is going. The main competitor here is contribs to Open Source, where you'll get lots of tips on style and integration for free (maybe too much so).

Seems like to do a good code review, the reviewer needs to know the scope of the code they're looking at, and where it fits in the big picture. Hell, maybe even the big picture too.

If you outsource code reviews, you lose that perspective and it comes down to "will it compile, and does it look vaguely correct?" which isn't super valuable.

That being said, if you can overcome that problem then the idea becomes a lot more enticing :)

That's a good perspective. "will it compile, and does it look vaguely correct?" can still be helpful though. Imagine you're learning Rails, and haven't learned all the idioms yet. Me leaving comments such as "this would be better as a before filter", "try to avoid metaprogramming unless you have to (and you don't have to here)", etc

Yes. I would certainly use it and frequently. I signed up. Please contact me as soon as this is available. My email is in my HN profile.

No! If my team can't write readable code, I'll get a better team!

Would you perform code review yourself on a big, unknown code base?

No.

I can dig it.

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