Re:Solving Exercism Problems – Learn with Peers
by swanson on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @01:45PM
(#9219766)
I think it depends on how you frame it. Personally, reviewing other people's code on exercism can be an invaluable chance to practice giving feedback on code. I've yet to find a better mechanism for practicing code reviews - and it something that even senior developers can benefit from.
Excerism is a great way to practice giving polite and thoughtful feedback to a captive newbie. I've gotten more practice at code reviews in 15 minutes a day on Exercism than I could have in several weeks at work.
Re:Solving Exercism Problems – Learn with Peers
by agentultra on Tuesday March 17, 2015 @03:52PM
(#9220843)
Too true! It's a valuable exercise and worth investing in. My observation was simply that the mechanics of submitting code and reviewing it have different, unequal reward mechanisms at present.
There doesn't appear to be a way for users to provide feedback to reviewers on whether they're being helpful besides leaving a comment. It might also be worthwhile to collect karma for taking the time to give a thoughtful review.
Some languages get more reviews than others. The big problem is taking the time to review other peoples' code. There isn't a lot of reward for doing that. Solving the challenges and receiving a comment or two is far more rewarding... so it tends to be pretty one-sided in the less-populated corners of the site. The Common Lisp group has been the most vocal for me so far followed by Python.
It's worth mentioning that the project is open source and you can contribute features on github (or add requests to the growing queue)[0].
It's a useful tool for dipping your toes in a new language if you're an experienced programmer. Code reviews are essential for learning the in-grained idioms and conventions of a language that make things easier. I think there's a lot of potential in a site like this if it were able to attract more users and reward reviewers.
[0] https://github.com/exercism/exercism.io