Show HN: Code reviews intimidated me, so I built a course on how to master them
5 comments
I would love to have a similar course done on debugging and TDD. I think most of the time what TDD course teach is how to right test but they skip on what is a meaningful test?
In your opinion, what are the most important things to look for in a code review?
First priority is finding flaws. These are mostly objective. There are the obvious ones within the diff like missed edge cases, corner cases and unexpected behavior changes. Then there are less obvious ones, in which you have to think about the change in the context of the greater system. For example, checking for things like side effects, backwards compatibility and rollback safety.
Second priority is finding readability gaps. These are mostly subjective. Things like naming, structure, bad abstractions, over-complexity and intent. These are important, but providing feedback on them is a bit more nuanced. This is where the human element of code review comes into play.
Second priority is finding readability gaps. These are mostly subjective. Things like naming, structure, bad abstractions, over-complexity and intent. These are important, but providing feedback on them is a bit more nuanced. This is where the human element of code review comes into play.
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