Ask HN: Where can I ask for code reviews online without being roasted for fun?

8 points by whitfieldsdad 2 years ago | 16 comments

This may just be a cognitive bias on my side of things, but, I've found that a lot of the time when you ask people you don't work with to review your code, they tend to review it savagely, and with the intent of completely, and absolutely destroying you for "likes", "upvotes", etc.

A lot of the time I just want to figure out if I'm going down the right path before I have anything perfect, or breathlessly beautiful to ask for feedback on.

A lot of the time, I'm learning a new technology or a new paradigm and don't know what I'm doing, and, asking for help on Reddit or StackOverflow usually just means being roasted.

Is there any way to avoid the roasts?

Is there a different community everyone goes to?

Leftium 2 years ago |

I believe this community would be different: https://www.recurse.com/

Based on their social rules: https://www.recurse.com/social-rules

However, it might be difficult to get in...

coldtrait 2 years ago | |

I'd rather work on interviewing to get a job than whatever that is.

jaredsohn 2 years ago |

Could ask GPT4 chatgpt to review some code. Tell it to review kindly if you want (but shouldn't need to).

akg_67 2 years ago | |

+1 In my personal projects, I frequently ask ChatGPT to review the code, find weak points and vulnerability in the code, identify area of improvements, review tests and identify missing coverage. ChatGPT is a good partner for team of one and single person startups/business for both technical and business discussion.

whitfieldsdad 2 years ago |

TIL: all code posted for review on https://codereview.stackexchange.com/ has to be compilable.

I noted that a function wasn't available in the snippet in my post, but 2 users still voted to remove the question without any feedback, person-to-person communication, etc., because it broke the rules.

While I'm a rule-breaker, and the problem, maybe GPT4 is where to go for code reviews.

tomcam 2 years ago |

Painful suggestion: I reframe the savagery as a free consultation by folks with poor people skills. Often one or two of the reviews gives you actionable results. I view this exercise as something you akin to learning how to be a sales person: a very unpleasant experience at first but eventually you develop a new muscle/superpower. Being coachable can take you pretty far.

whitfieldsdad 2 years ago | |

I was moreso thinking of review comments like "this is the worst code I've ever seen", "give up now", "ignoring the hundreds of errors, this looks fine", Dreamworks villain laughter, etc.

tomcam 2 years ago | | |

Ugh. I feel you, which is why I unfortunately had to hedge with l "Often one or two of the reviews...". I think the best way to handle that is to understand you'll have to separate wheat from chaff, period, that's just the price. The good news is, once you learn to ignore comments like that you don't really need to worry about it ever again.

Sucks to go through that learning period.

mdaniel 2 years ago |

https://codereview.stackexchange.com/ may be worth a shot; I know it's a common meme that the stackexchange sites are a cesspool but my experience has been "garbage in, garbage out"

Also, I would guess the "review it savagely" and "absolutely destroying you" part is likely projection, or perhaps not setting expectations of what outcome you want from any such review. If it's "what's wrong with this code?" one will get a monster range of responses. If you have specific concerns, then stating them as specific success criteria will likely improve your experience

Without any question you will want to consider the audience of peers when asking for reviews. Stopping by r/Programmer and soliciting input is a good way to get the lolz; posting in a more targeted forum for your language or framework or both, or even asking your followers on any social media presence may get less firehose from the Internet

turtleyacht 2 years ago |

It's fun to write code you don't need reviewed. Build wondrous things, accept contributions (or not), and enjoy each project as its own gem.

If you want code reviewed, contribute to existing projects.

Part of getting better is realizing the previous work needs to be rewritten. Your past self wouldn't have known that at the beginning. But you got better.

whitfieldsdad 2 years ago | |

I get what you mean, and agree with the idea of Just Building Things, but, I also want to make sure that I'm building things "the right way" if that makes sense.

For example, I'm not new to programming, but am new to Go and have been struggling to figure out how to model messages as structs using composition rather than inheritance.

As one of, if not the most senior developer in the team that I work on, I have nobody to ask questions to, and even though the answers are out there, on the Internet, I'm still confused by them, which, IMO isn't super anomalous, but, still leaves me in a place where I'm yearning for feedback.

TillE 2 years ago | | |

My preferred approach for that kind of difficulty is just to look at how existing open-source projects have solved similar problems. You'll either figure it out or come away with specific, informed questions that you can ask on a Discord or Reddit or something.

turtleyacht 2 years ago | | |

That makes sense. I'm trying to wrap my head around Dubray's State-Action-Model and have reduced it to rewriting examples from different perspectives (first starting with the model, for example).

I found this answer on StackOverflow about Go structs for composition. It's interesting because at least there's an example of how not to do it (in Go) and a detailed answer:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/70100167

The Ben Franklin approach: "I've seen one more way not to write it."

Hope you find or figure what you're looking for.

coldtrait 2 years ago |

I had a good experience while learning Ruby by asking on the Ruby discord channel. Everyone was supportive and there's a core group of highly knowledgeable users. A lot of people ask for help there, and it's a very positive environment.

Additionally on most sub-reddits I've seen people get good constructive feedback on their code.

If you can find such discord channels where the environment is non-toxic (I doubt any coding oriented ones are) and the users are active, that could be the ideal option.

calebdre 2 years ago |

I’m actually building one right now so I can give code reviews for my mentees more easily!

I’ll post back when I’ve put it up on the internet.

ttymck 2 years ago | |

What does it do differently that makes it more valuable than github, et al?