Lost Island of Good Code

Another dispute about the style, beauty and compactness of the code took too much time, and therefore was sent to allow wider audience StackOverflow . It helped, and the dispute was resolved, but in the comments I was hinted that I had come to the wrong address:

Stack Exchange's " codereview " site.

It turns out that more than a year ago, a Code Review questionnaire was born in the dungeons of Area 51 , designed to make the code better.


')
Code Review has been in beta for 663 days already. At the moment, the project has collected no less than 5,689 questions, and twice as many answers (for comparison, the number of questions on StackOverflow is approaching 4 million , including 780,000 unanswered).

Examples of sample questions you can ask the community:

Here is my code. Does the API look good enough?

How can this sorting algorithm be improved?

I doubt the readability of this piece of% name_language% code. How to make it more understandable?

Most likely, you can google the answers to these questions, but sometimes it is quite difficult to do this, especially for novice programmers. It is possible that the search engine will lead you to StackOverflow. With high probability you will find the necessary answer there.

I devote to refactoring someone else's (and my) incomprehensible / too complicated / low-quality code for a long time. This is a good way to learn in the process of work, follow the trends and not stand still. Therefore, the emergence of such a resource as the Code Review did not leave me indifferent.

Network Stack Exchange began its existence with the site stackoverflow.com , launched in 2008 and known to many users Habra, and now includes more than 90 specialized Q & A projects. Among them, you can find questionnaires not only on the near-scientific, but also on religious and sports topics, and even one about home brewing. A complete list of all projects and information about their popularity can be found at stackexchange.com/sites .

The StackOverflow format itself is very successful for finding objective and high-quality solutions on any issue. But this format works well only with a large number of people involved in the discussion.

Code Review is now in the status of Public Beta . This label stands for:

Sites remain in beta for at least 90 days.

Those. for at least 90 days, the site needs to insist that a critical mass of users, questions and answers launch mechanisms similar to StackOverflow. There are quite specific metrics that allow you to judge the readiness of the project for release:


As you can see, with a fairly good number of users, at the moment the Code Review is lame in the number of questions and answers. I dare to suggest that the availability of answers depends directly on the number and quality of questions.

I propose to think: how many times a day do you have a code flashing before your eyes that could be a little better? And what's stopping you from improving it? If this is a lack of time or skills, and perhaps even simple doubts that cannot be dispelled alone, then the Code Review is the most suitable way to cope with interference.

The next time you come up with a non-trivial programming task, try to bring its discussion to the Code Review. Take part in the life of the project, ask questions, answer them. And remember: each line of quality code makes someone's life easier and saves a little pony from tears.