I never get anything reviewed because nothing i ever code is final. One day perhaps.
I am the only person in my company that does Ruby on Rails development. Are their any place online to find people to review your code. Like a stackoverflow.com for code review?
This is SO true! Thanks for putting it out there!
@Chad Moran:
Iām with you in this one, i do the exact same thing, start codding all day long, and in the next morning review my old code, i have to say it works great for me, i guess my duo is me and mini-me. I donāt know if can do that with another employee at my work, they are not bat programmers, but there isnāt chemistry and i donāt admire them, but i realize that if I can find my perfect buddy who can successfully review my code the productivity and energy would be awesome.
At last. The false assumption that someone can be self-critical is over. You might beleive you can be self-critical, but how can you actually be self-critical if you are never fully self-aware.
Just by explaining something to someone you become aware of problems in your code. The same is true of personal skills, interpersonal skills and management skills. People donāt have a great gague on what they know if they donāt know what they know. People donāt know they are treating others badly if they donāt realise they are doing it!
People donāt know how bad their management skills are because they simply arenāt aware. If they had to stop and explain why they mange people and things the way they do - they would have the same reaction as you have explained above.
Now if you can just extend your idea out a little and accept peer driven critical (positive and negative) feedback (or better still - 360 degree feedback), THEN you can truely be self-critical in all areas. Your code and company will benefit.
@PaulG
The problem with peer reviews is that the peer review gives management ammunition to fire you if you donāt live up to the expectations of even one of your peers.
Management should not be involved with peer review meetings - only peers should be. Not even the project manager should be part of the peer review. That way there is no holding back and no grudges held. There is also no wasted time of non-technical managers listening to technical options and tricks.
if Management are at a peer review - it isnāt a peer review.
Hmā¦ Iād like to nominate today as coding buddy day. Imagine receiving Will you be my coding buddy? every feb 26.
Seriously though - sharing code with another pair of eyes does wonders. You get embarrassed by your wtfs and you get a sense of pride out of clean and readable code. My current choice of coding buddy is pretty limited as thereās only one other developer working here
Perhaps thereās a niche market in this? www.findyourcodingbuddy.com
?
The greatest duo of all time: Wallace and Gromit!
Seriously, peer reviewing would greatly improve the code quality where I am currently working. As Iām not an employee, just a contractor, I wonder what the best method of changing the working practices of the people I work with.
Unfortunately, the people I work with donāt read programming blogs so they are a tough bunch to improve to start with.
Skizz
May I be Batman?
My manager just mentioned about exactly the same thing days ago and I couldnāt really agree with him as he didnāt illustrate the benefits of doing so good enough, but now I see the light of it
Nice one Jeff!
Hey Now Jeff,
Coding with other people is always more fun too.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto
If you can explain you code to a non techie, itās good code. If you canāt itās refactor timeā¦
Dave
I am pretty much the only coder in our company right now, so I donāt have a coding buddy. But we will probably hire another coder in a few days, so I hope he can become something like that for me:)
I hope youāre on the interview loop.
I think Gumby and Pokey are a bit more accurate for this (cough) profession.
What to do if you are the best programmer in the company and everyone wants to peer with you so they get their code checked but none of them is good enough to check yours?
That probably wont happen, you can always learn something. Noone knows everything. They can at least check the readibility of your code and they will learn from your code.
Many years ago there was a story going around - which may have been wildly apocryphal - that went something like this.
A software house noticed a steep decline in standards and productivity and managed to trace its roots to the sacking of a cleaner. When the programmers were asked what he used to do their replies all boiled down to:
He asked us āwhyā we were doing it that way and he listened carefully to our explanations.
Needless to say, the cleaner was rehired.
Itās not the review that improves your skills, itās explaining clearly what you are doing and and why you are doing it that way. If itās clear in your mind itās clear in the code.
Paul
I prefer having a coding bee-atch.
Beavis and Butthead