Code Reads

Holy moly. Didn't expect to see this at the top of HN. Went to grab some dinner, and the ol' inbox is already starting to fill up. Thanks for the warm response.<p>To illuminate the rationale a bit more ... A lot of folks have asked for quick "gut checks", "sanity checks", and similar overviews of their codebases in the past, and this seems like a way to:<p>1) Help folks out in a way that doesn't entail a massive commitment or expense. Much of the time, when people are struggling with a thorny technical problem, an outside perspective and a bit of friendly advice is invaluable in getting it solved.<p>2) Get a lot of valuable exposure to different approaches in production apps, to learn as much as I teach.<p>3) A style of work that I can be productive with, even without a reliable internet connection, or offline entirely (a large problem these days).<p>So, it seemed like a fine idea to try. I'll keep y'all posted on how it goes. And although Code Reads will be entirely confidential, if any of the companies are interested in sharing theirs (perhaps to attract recruits) -- maybe I'll be able to post one or two up publicly.

I'm sure Jeremy can only do so much code reviews a day (unless he's a ninja robot), so why isn't there a crowd-sourced version of this? Sometimes I write code that I would like other coders to help/critique with. Github is great for collaborating and some code reviews happen (pull requests) but sometimes you're just working on a project and have no idea whether you're writing the right things or not. There have been times where I'm writing Python code and kept wondering whether I was being pythonic.<p>Think of it as a StackOverflow for code review. Reviewing someone's code gives you karma/points/kudos/&#60;whatever&#62;, and dupes are OK because we're trying to encourage everyone to help (score points). Note: I haven't really given this a lot of thought, just an idea.

Probably a silly question, but what's the deal with this?<p><pre><code> &#60;button ... onclick="location.href='mailto:jashkenas@gmail.com?Subject=Code%20Read%20%5BSmall%5D'"&#62; Small &#60;/button&#62; </code></pre> Not a huge deal but I think it's good to show where a link goes on mouseover, especially a mailto: link (some mail clients take a while to start) ... it'd seem you want &#60;a&#62; here.

I'd like to offer the same service <i>free</i> to anyone would like a Code Read but Jeremy's rate is too high/he doesn't have time.<p>I'd get a lot out of it as I'm building a Javascript static analysis tool - exposure to lots of production code would identify how useful its features would be.<p>I'm no Jeremy Ashkenas, but:<p>- I've been writing JS apps since 2009, after I stopped doing AS3 apps with Flex<p>- Teach Backbone.js, JS and d3 at General Assembly, have given various talks/workshops<p>- Lead dev on two 10k+ LOC JS apps (for Picklive and Skimlinks) using Backbone.js<p>- Built 3 game clients for Picklive with JS, on mobile and web<p>- Built a visual scraper recorder/runner plugin for Chrome for Arachnys<p>- Contribute to JS open source - shims, Sinon.js, lots of little pull requests<p><a href="https://github.com/timruffles" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/timruffles</a> @timruffles

(Jeremy, are you still working for the NYT and free-lancing, or has your wanderlust finally made you take off for good?)<p>Looks like a great idea. Maybe you could require projects first convert to Literate CoffeeScript to make your job easier. ;-)

I wish there were a real example (to get a sense for the types of things he looks at), involving an open source project (how about coffeescript itself?)

How I hoped this to be an announcement for a public code reading. Like a author reading a chapter of his book, Jeremy reading and discussing a part of the coffeescript source.

For projects that are open source that are submitted to this, I would love to see its code review published.

In my previous life as an enterprise code monkey I've came across good and bad Architects. Just knowing and being able to tell me how something could be done better is valuable. But I found my frustration often was 'just f*ing do it!'.<p>If an Architect came with great refactoring suggestions that would take minutes or even seconds to implement, what's the value in dumping me with a document?<p>The best Architects would just do it if it was straightforward, review it with me (so I'd see why/if it was better and teach me) then commit.<p>I'd like to see a similar thing here. Hands-on code reviews with commits. There's little I hate more than documents that never get actioned.<p>I love the spirit of this service but add in commits to make it dynamite.

Just curious: how much do such prolific programmers usually charge? (Hourly/daily/etc.)

This is a really interesting model. It seems that if Jeremy gets some traction with this there is a very obvious follow-up product which provides these artifacts as a service. Of course, between here and there is all the stuff he's going to learn doing it "manually" first.<p>I could see this being a inflection point for him (or someone who runs with this idea) in a few years. Good luck!

I always thought there should be a good market for companies hiring outside code reviewer before they hire an employee or a consultancy. Seen many projects crippled by dirty code written by contractors.

Could stand to benefit from having a domain specifically for the project.

Don't take this the wrong way, but why would I want you to review my code? I would consider adding a few "achievements" like:<p>* I've worked on JS for <i>x</i> years.<p>* I've written client-side JS for <i>x</i> companies.<p>Anyway, you get the idea.

Interesting, is this new in code? There is a significant market for editorial review (in contradistinction to peer review), especially after translation (e.g.: a Japanese or French scientist will pay a translator and <i>then</i> an English-speaking, technically competent editor to comprehensively edit the translation).

This is a wonderful example of false advertising...<p>He's talking about very general "code reading" on the whole article and then, at the bottom, he lines out which languages he knows - and it suddenly gets disappointing for anyone outside the Ruby/JS world.<p>He has to be more clear about that in the headline.

Would anyone be interested in a podcast of code being read with professional/semi-professional voice talent, possibly with more in-dept technical review?<p>Also, would anyone be interested in dramatic reading of potentially horrible/hilariously bad code?<p>I think either could be fun, but maybe that's just me.

IMO this is more effort than its worth, and he will get annoyed with companies trying to hire him outright. You'd be surprised how hard it is for companies to change coding practices.

I considered doing this same thing a few years ago but decided that I don't scale. I'm glad someone is trying it out. I'm curious to see if there's a market.

Interesting. But how is this a sustainable business model?