{"id":1830,"date":"2010-10-23T14:49:34","date_gmt":"2010-10-23T19:49:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/?p=1830"},"modified":"2023-12-20T16:25:15","modified_gmt":"2023-12-20T21:25:15","slug":"recognizing-good-code-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/2010\/10\/23\/recognizing-good-code-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Recognizing Good Code Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

While the benefits of code review are proven<\/a>, documented<\/a>, numerous<\/a> and awesome<\/a>, it doesn’t change the fact that most people, in general, don’t like doing it.<\/p>\n

I guess code review just isn’t really all that fun.<\/p>\n

So a few months ago, I broadcast the idea of turning code review into a game.<\/a> It was my way of trying to mix things up – “let’s add points, and have reviewers\/developers competing to be the best participant in the code review process”.<\/p>\n

Well, if there’s one thing that my supervisor Greg<\/a> has taught me, it’s how I shouldn’t rush headlong into something before all of the facts are in. \u00a0So before I decide to do something like game-ifize code review, I should take a look at some prior work in the area…<\/p>\n

Enter this guy: \u00a0Sebastian Deterding<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In particular, check out the following slide-show. \u00a0Flip through it if you have the time. \u00a0If you don’t have the time, scroll down, where I get to the salient point with respect to game-ificating code review.<\/p>\n

Here’s the slide-show.<\/a> Be sure to read the narrative at the bottom.<\/p>\n

The Salient Point<\/h3>\n

Sebastian seems to be saying that adding points to apps and trying to incite competition does not make something a game. \u00a0If it did, then this should be countless hours of fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Without play, there is no game. Points do not equal a game. \u00a0It’s not nearly that simple.<\/p>\n

Free Pizza and Pop<\/h3>\n

I’m going to divert for a second here.<\/p>\n

Last week, a company set themselves up a couple of booths in the lobby of the Bahen Center where I work. \u00a0They were there to recruit university students to work for their company – either as interns, or full-timers.<\/p>\n

They were also handing out free pizza and pop.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, I wanted a few slices – but I figured it would be polite if I engaged them in conversation before waltzing off with some of the free food and drink they’d brought.<\/p>\n

So I sparked up a conversation with one of the recruiters, and he told me about the company. \u00a0I’m going to call this recruiter Vlad.<\/p>\n

I ended up gently steering the conversation towards code review, and I asked my inevitable question:<\/p>\n

“So, do you guys do code review?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I felt like a dentist asking a patient if he’s been flossing. \u00a0Vlad waffled a bit, but the general impression was:<\/p>\n

“Not as much as we should. \u00a0We don’t have a prescribed workflow. It’d be hard to persuade all of the teams to do it.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then we started talking about code review in general. \u00a0It turns out that Vlad had worked in a few companies where they’d done code review, and he always felt a little short changed. \u00a0He said something along the lines of:<\/p>\n

“I never felt compelled to do reviews. \u00a0They just sort of happened…and I did it, and it felt like…unrecognized effort. \u00a0I mean, what’s the incentive? \u00a0Do you know what I mean? \u00a0There’s incentive for the software, but I’m talking incentive for me<\/em>. \u00a0And some people did really lousy reviews…but my reviews were treated the same as theirs. \u00a0I didn’t get recognized, and didn’t get rewarded if I did a good review. \u00a0So it was hard for me to do them. \u00a0I want to be recognized for my good reviews, for my good contributions.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wish I’d had a tape-recorder running so I could have gotten Vlad’s exact words. \u00a0But that’s what I remember him saying.<\/p>\n

Feedback and Recognition<\/h3>\n

Maybe instead of trying to game-ulize code review, I can instead hear what Vlad is saying and work off of that.<\/p>\n

With the code review that Vlad participated in, all of the feedback went to the code author, and none went to the reviewers<\/strong>. \u00a0And the reviewers are the ones who are doing all of the heavy lifting! \u00a0As a reviewer, Vlad also wants feedback, and recognition for code review done well.<\/p>\n

There’s a company in Toronto that specializes in feedback like this. \u00a0They’re one of the major players in the Toronto start-up scene, and have built a pretty sweet suite of tools to facilitate quick and easy feedback\/recognition.<\/p>\n

The company is called Rypple<\/a>. \u00a0And maybe that’s the name of the application, too. \u00a0(checks website) Yeah, it’s both.<\/p>\n

So Rypple has this feature called Kudos that let’s people publicly\u00a0acknowledge the good work of their team.<\/p>\n

Normally, I don’t pimp companies. \u00a0And it upsets me when people comment on my blog, and their sub-text is to try to sell their product or service. \u00a0However, I think this video is\u00a0relevant, so I’m posting their demo video so you can see how Kudos work:<\/p>\n

Click here if you can’t see the video.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

The Idea<\/h3>\n

So Rypple’s idea is to have a feed that the team subscribes to, and publicly display things like Kudos. \u00a0The badges for the Kudos are also limited in how many you can give per week, so they’re a valuable commodity that can’t just be handed out all over the place. \u00a0Cool idea.<\/p>\n

So there’s one approach – use a service like Rypple to give your reviewers better feedback and recognition.<\/p>\n

Or maybe we could build an extension for Review Board<\/a> that does something similar, and more oriented around code review.<\/p>\n

It’s not oriented like a game, like I had originally envisioned. \u00a0But somehow, I think this idea has more meaning and traction than just “adding points”.<\/p>\n

More on this idea in a few days. \u00a0But please, comment if you have any thoughts or ideas to add.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the benefits of code review are proven, documented, numerous and awesome, it doesn’t change the fact that most people, in general, don’t like doing it. I guess code review just isn’t really all that fun. So a few months ago, I broadcast the idea of turning code review into a game. It was my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[454,657,649],"tags":[854,501,856,855,859,857,1219,504,122,858],"class_list":["post-1830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-code-reviews","category-extensions-review-board-code-reviews-computer-science-technology","category-review-board","tag-code-inspection","tag-code-review","tag-good-code-review","tag-how-to-review-code","tag-incentive","tag-recognition","tag-review-board","tag-reviewboard","tag-team","tag-value"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prmTy-tw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1830"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3151,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830\/revisions\/3151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeconley.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}