Submitted 11 months ago by onlinepersona@programming.dev to programming@programming.dev
Many of us write opensource code in a void: nobody ever looks at it, uses it nor reviews it. We are the only users and authors.
In order to improve, where can we get our code reviewed? I don’t mean professionally, just from like-minded individuals.
Let’s get a community going on programming.dev?
Just created a community request post for it programming.dev/post/6295144
If anyone is interested upvote the request and if anyone wants to mod it let me know
Would love something like this, but it’s very hard to get such a community working. Most of the time there will be way more people wanting a review of their code than people wanting to put in the work and review something.
Maybe some kind of point system could work. Like one needs to review at least two times before you can get your work reviewed.
There is a Stack Exchange community for code reviews: codereview.stackexchange.com
However they have some strict rules on what is allowed so it may not be suitable for open source projects. Two problematic ones are: 1) The poster must be the author/owner of the code. You, for example, can’t post code that someone else has written. 2) All code that is to be reviewed must be included in the post. You can’t just link to a repository.
I would totally get in on that. Seems almost like a fun OS project itself. Like a volunteer hub type site to just seek reviews
There was something like that on Reddit but I can’t remember the sub. I haven’t seen one here. The best way to get reviews of open source is via contributions to larger projects. That of course doesn’t answer your question directly but is worth noting.
I’d recommend joining some discord or matrix servers for the language you work in or likeminded folk. They tend to have channels for that, and some have really helpful communities.
It is quite empty indeed 🤔 !reviewmycode@lemmy.world
Not exactly what you want, but plug-ins like sonarlint can nudge you in the right direction.
stifle867@programming.dev 11 months ago
This is not an answer to your question but it’s tangentially related.
Someone I greatly respected ran an open-source project with the policy of merge everything. Completely flip this idea of carefully review, debate and revise every PR. His theory was that it helps to build an open community, and if something breaks someone else will revert that commit. He says that the main branch was almost always stable, a massive improvement to how it was run previously. He passed several years ago and for some reason this reminded me of him.
I guess what I’m trying to say is if you get something out there that people find useful, the code will be looked at. It doesn’t help you if you’re looking for someone to collaborate sorry.
treadful@lemmy.zip 11 months ago
This is how you get supply chain attacks.
stifle867@programming.dev 11 months ago
Yes it is. The code is in Bitcoin Core so there’s a non-zero chance you win at life if you want to try.
varsock@programming.dev 11 months ago
There is a very effective approach (34:00), that big companies like cloudflare use, to ship a product in a fast and quality way. It bears parallels to what you are describing
jeremyparker@programming.dev 11 months ago
That’s Wikipedia’s approach, arguably one of the most successful “open source” projects in history - certainly not without its problems, but overall it’s pretty great
varsock@programming.dev 11 months ago
I’ve actually found his blog where he talks about this “optimistic merge”
hintjens.com/blog:106
stifle867@programming.dev 11 months ago
There’s a number of them as the idea grows. See also the C4 process RFC
attn_dfct_dev@programming.dev 11 months ago
This is for 0mq right? I remember reading Pieter Hintjens about this realization he had over a long time of developing 0mq.
stifle867@programming.dev 11 months ago
Yes that’s right. I was only just transitioning into adulthood and Pieter mentored me and profoundly changed how I view many things. It wasn’t just zeromq but that was the main thing. I still keep his books at hand on my bookshelf. His death impacted me greatly.
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