Sunday, May 31, 2009

Code Reading follow-up

I'm glad to see that my Questions Five Ways posts are starting to draw comments and that the discussions are starting to get some legs of there own. Part of a comment on the Code Reading post really stood out to me:

"Your post also prompted me to think about having group code reading sessions, where we can pick up a small open source project or a part of a larger project and then try to understand it in a group. Perhaps like a 'code reading dojo'." -Parag Shah

I've been thinking about something similar. Over on a post about code reading on the Ruby Best Practices blog, I wrote:

"You know what would be fun? A 'code of the week' reading club. I'd love to have a formal excuse to dive into code, learn what others are seeing in it, and get exposed to a wider range of code since I wouldn't be the only one deciding what to read."

So, what do you think? Would code reading be better/more fun/more useful as a group effort? Would you rather participate in person, or on a mailing list/blog?

5 comments:

Rick DeNatale said...

Interesting idea.

For better or worse, it reminds me of the old days of "code reviews."

JEG2 said...

It would be good for increasing exposure. I'm definitely selective about what I tend to read so it would be good to have someone else making the choices from time to time. Plus, followup discussion my help you catch things you missed on your pass through or even just debate some choice the author made.

rbxbx said...

I love the 'code of the week' idea. Martinis and code review, huzzah.

newellista said...

I think that would be a great idea for a hacking lunch activity.

Parag said...

"So, what do you think? Would code reading be better/more fun/more useful as a group effort? Would you rather participate in person, or on a mailing list/blog?"

I think having a group of people in the same room can result in a lot of impromptu learning, but being able to capture the crux of the session online also has a lot of value.