Is there a place where you can request code reviews on opensource software?

onlinepersona@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 124 points –

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.

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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.

One issue I can see with the points system is that people could just approve it with a "Looks good to me!" without even looking at the code. Or just looking at a small portion of the code.

Also bike shedding. Simple stuff may get many people willing to review / argue about how you should have used A over B, or even C

Big / complicated projects - forget it. Especially if if they would need major refactoring.

Could there be a way to award the points proportionally, based on how useful the feedback is?

But who decides that? If the person who requested it can do this, you only need a friend to abuse the system and give each other a few extra points.

Maybe a open point history could help with this and users moderate themselves with this.

Yeah that's definitely a possibility. It's really a tricky topic to build a review community. One could try other approaches like dedicated volunteer reviewers. But if you look at exorcism, that will become hard to manage for languages with huge demand.

A system where everyone also needs to review is definitely better. Especially since everyone also learns reading other peoples code.

with that there would need some way for people to have things to initially review to get the community started. Could do something like after the first 3 posts the point system goes into effect

True, it's not a fleshed out idea haha. But starting with a few points would work.

Could actually be a cool in it self, wish I had time for something like that.

Something like c sharp acedemy would be kinda cool. Basically do some beginner projects with good code reviews you get a "belt". That belt allows you to review the beginner projects as you work on intermediate projects. Then you complete those and get another belt that let's you do advanced projects and review the intermediate projects others submitted.

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