Code Review Service
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Hi!
After learning the basics of programming, the most valuable resource is code review by more experienced members in the community.
Can we have a feature where the user asks for code review? Do we have community members, who are interested in offering code review?
Such a feature can be implemented, for example, as a button in the screen after the puzzle is solved, which creates a private forum topic with a copy of the solution. The topic can be tagged as "review" and it can be closed.
There should be some limitation on how many active code review requests a user can have.
I would like to hear your opinion.
The functionality you talking about is implemented on Exercism, for example.
To qwerty - thanks for the intelligence information :) this may provide a good reference for us. And what is your opinion,
is it much used there?
We had a brief discussion with Özgür in e-mail, here are my few points:
There was something alike - comments under the solution, for example (obvious issue is however that solution could be updated, as we don't keep all versions as github does) - also of course it was not much visible - one needed to open solution to see whether there are comments etc :) so it was pretty "raw" attempt and was removed eventually.
It is really curious to know whether there are people who may want review or who may want to spend time reviewing others. Not sure how much our "audience" fits...
One of the simple approaches I see is to create magic button which allows user to create a "review post" in the forum, automatically titling it properly, making it private for the task and copying the current version of solution into it. Perhaps we'll need something more (as mentioned - limiting amount of such topics user can create per day - and perhaps filtering them from others).
It would be good to hear some more opinions or hints please :)
And what is your opinion, is it much used there?
Not much used, and there is at least three reasons for that:
- Long waiting times. Some mentoring requests can get stuck in queue for several days or even months. I have seen requests which are in queue for almost an year.
- High expectations from mentors. Mentors must follow very strict Code of Conduct and must not disappoint their students. Even the best mentors sometimes fell they are not good enough for a particular mentoring request.
- AI supremacy. Instead of requesting mentoring, one may ask for automated feedback from ChatGPT integration implemented on this website. Robot will give you feedback almost instantly, and its feedback have better quality than most of the mentors, because it is constantly learned on huge array of people's submissions and is never tired and is never sleep.
А typo, sorry: feel, not fell. In a phrase: sometimes feel they are not good enough
I use Exercism. I understand the mentioned criticism points but this is normal, because we ARE people, and even the best mentor is mentoring only a subset of the programming languages and a subset of the exercises. It is entirely on voluntary basis.
I understand well if CodeAbbey community is not interested in or not ready for offering a similar service. The reason I ask is to find out if there is any interest in it. I thought CodeAbbey can be a good place to start a code review service for those who want to learn and for those who learn by teaching.
Thank you for reading and best regards,
Özgür
I do not want to make this discussion about ChatGPT but I have to add the following explanations:
you cannot ask ChatGPT integration on that plattform before you submit. You can ask ChatGPT if you submit and fail. If you passed the tests, it is disabled. So you cannot get mentoring from ChatGPT
you are discouraged from the usage of ChatGPT on Exercism. Let me quote from the ChatGPT integration:
Are you sure you want to ask ChatGPT? ChatGPT is a powerful tool, but it can also make it too easy to get unstuck and remove a lot of the learning opportunity that comes from wrestling with a problem. We recommend only using it when you're too stuck to continue without help.
However clever ChatGPT appears, it does not "understand" code. Its suggestions may therefore be incorrect, muddled or misleading. However, it often provides useful insights to help unblock you. Use these suggestions as inspiration, not instruction.
In fact I figured out how ChatGPT works in Exercism just to be able to write this explanation. I never used it myself before.
In order to demostrate, what the ChatGPT integration offers, I disrupted a solution and ran the tests and asked GPT:
"ChatGPT has the following suggestions:
The sumOfMultiples function is returning the length of the set of unique multiples instead of the sum of those multiples. The Set.length function is being used to calculate the final result, but it should be replaced with a function that calculates the sum of the elements in the set. The logic for calculating the sum of the multiples is correct, but the final step of summing those multiples is not being done correctly. Remember to sum the elements in the set instead of getting the length of the set."
Hey, Özgür,
I like your explaination.
Though I don't understand one moment. You say:
So you cannot get mentoring from ChatGPT
And later on you showed that ChatGPT actually did mentor you.
You wasn't happy with how it did mentor you?
Or maybe you meant that ChatGPT cannot help you improve solution after you have solved it. But for me, I usually ask mentors for help when I'm stuck, not when I have solved the problem, so it is not much of a difference for me...
And anyway, the main point is that mentoring is not very popular even on Exercism. I wish I could help to make Codeabbey more attractive plaform in terms of mentoring, but I just don't know where to start...
For now, it is probably better to develop this idea with small steps, not trying to copy a full-blown mentoring environment from Exercism, as it is a huge work which most likely will not pay off.
We may start with the idea of "review posts" as Rodion suggested. It probably won't be too hard to implement, but we immediately can see by activity if people here like the idea or they aren't much interested.