spec

[benawad]

Marketplace for Code Reviews

• Home page
  • List of code reviews
    • display name, programming tags, and link to GitHub url
• GitHub OAuth for login
• Create code review
  • name (max length 30 or something)
  • description
  • github repo (selected from dropdown)
  • programming language tags (max of 3)
  • list of questions (max of 10 questions)
• View code review
  • reviewer answers questions
    • send email to the other person when code review done
  • see who reviewed and what they said
    • public, anyone can see this
  • rate the person who reviewer
• My code reviews page
  • list of code reviews given and the rating received
  • list of code reviews received
• NavBar
  • display average rating
• Code Review Briefing
  • number of questions/flags
  • list of questions
    • code snippet
    • comment thread
    • click to go to file where code snippet came from

[Remulos]

The first question I get asked when requesting a code review is 'What are you trying to do?'. You should add a description field when creating code review, it will be easier for reviewers to quickly decide if they want to review it rather than visiting the github and scanning the (potentially useless) README.

[audiBookning]

Maybe adding a category to classify the different type of goals for the code review.
for ex: bug, quality control, structure prototyping, mentoring (use live share of vs code or another tool?), ...
Bugs category gives the possibility of transforming code ponder in a help forum... That shouldn't be the main focus of the app (i think), but it will grab a share of a gigantic market.

On the other hand, the categorization should be more broad than the examples given above.
A classification too detailed will only add complexity without sufficient benefits.

A good addition would be a more opinionated form when creating the code review request and its description. It should follow some template that would help the user give better info about its goal. There could even be different templates for each category of request.

That would help avoid common descriptions like "Help! Everything is wrong!" ;)

The same can be done for the final rating by the requester. A rating more semantically rich would give much more info to future requester.

As for the regex used in the github url, i think it is not necessary. Github has a graphql API that could be used to check the validity of the url.

For the code review, an advanced feature could be a chat channel associated for each one or one could use just the format of a forum, where the code review page would be like a thread with posts.

[benawad]

@Remulos great idea, I'll add that as a field in the form

@audiBookning

1. I like the idea of categories and having templates for them. I think at first I'll have a generic form, see how people use it, and then add categories/templates.
2. I agree about the ratings, any ideas on ways to do that?
3. I'll use the GitHub API to fetch all the users repos and have the user select from a dropdown list
4. Chat is something I want to do, but I will save it for later iterations

[audiBookning]

2. I agree about the ratings, any ideas on ways to do that?

I think a better rating workflow should be based on what browsing requester are interested to know. Here are some potential ideas to seed the structure of the rating, but they should be better reviewed in the future (also there shouldn't be to much of them, just enough to give a good idea):

• Interpersonal: good at explaining or teaching, good english language, approachable character, trustiness (too generic), ...
• technical: knowledge in specific areas, ease of problem solving, ... (maybe base this on the future categories of the request?)
• time management: quick to help and answer, ...

Of course not forgetting a comment field.
One other possibility could be that the overall rating would be automatically calculated with the 'sub-rating' given by the requester...

The spoken language could be also a feature. That would give the possibility to join people with native language other than english. This does not mean a multi-language app. The app's official language could still be only english.

From all of this, an interesting feature arise. The users would have Projects/Repos as atomic objects and each projects could have different requests. This is a natural occurrence, if for example, i had a request today for the same project where other requests have already been solved. This is only in the point of view of the requester. The implementation shouldn't be to different from just using requests.
That would had a component/page to manage the project/repos in the application to your specs.

[sterjoski]

3. I'll use the GitHub API to fetch all the users repos and have the user select from a dropdown list

Just wanted to mention this, maybe allow gists too.

[audiBookning]

One requester could put its request as simply public, but he could also add specific code reviewers by name. Those reviewers would then get a notification of a request to review.

This brings the necessity to facilitate the access to the reviews of an user. Which bring a Profile page for each of them, where, beside the reviews given to them, they could put a brief bio, foto, avatar, companhy logo and url, other usual contact info...

One other feature would be to give the possibility to code reviewers to also rate their interaction with the requester. This would help future users to decide if they want to accept the request or avoid waste of time, inter-personal head-heck or simple trolling.
Which invokes a system to help users tag requests as spam or trolling...

One other thing that the spec are missing is an admin section of the app and a help-desk/issue system.

[Remulos]

This brings the necessity to facilitate the access to the reviews of an user. Which bring a Profile page for each of them, where, beside the reviews given to them, they could put a brief bio, foto, avatar, companhy logo and url, other usual contact info...

One other feature would be to give the possibility to code reviewers to also rate their interaction with the requester. This would help future users to decide if they want to accept the request or avoid waste of time, inter-personal head-heck or simple trolling.
Which invokes a system to help users tag requests as spam or trolling...

This is increasingly sounding like a niche clone of fiverr or Upwork.
To be clear, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, they're both massively popular sites and certainly inspiration can be taken from them. If reviewers are going to have some sort of profile page, I would suggest something like this JS diff checker as a good tool to show off some types of work. Code cleanup for example.

[audiBookning]

This is increasingly sounding like a niche clone of fiverr or Upwork.

I am only adding thing, taking in mind a full fledged app, but i do not know the vision that @benawad has for this app. He will be the final deciding factor in everything.

Nonetheless most of the features that he decide to add will certainly be divided in different phases of the app. The main goal should be to have a 1º usable version with minimum usability.

[sterjoski]

This brings the necessity to facilitate the access to the reviews of an user. Which bring a Profile page for each of them, where, beside the reviews given to them, they could put a brief bio, foto, avatar, companhy logo and url, other usual contact info...

They are singing in with GitHub which contains most of those + open source contributions and personal projects.

[audiBookning]

They are singing in with GitHub which contains most of those + open source contributions and personal projects.

That is an excellent point. Github has a wealth of info that could be used and reorganized automatically to give a better profile and doesn't have to be in the app database.

[bengry]

Consider taking a look at Gitpod. It's not like Codeponder in essence, but they both integrate with GitHub in a pretty integral way. Gitpod is basically a VS Code like experience for any GitHub repo, and the way you open it up is: https://gitpod.io#<full-github-url>, e.g. https://gitpod.io#https://github.com/benawad/codeponder/.
I can definitely see something similar going on to get started with Codeponder - https://codeponder.com#https://github.com/benawad/codeponder/pullrequests/1 to either submit one (if you're the repo owner), or review it (if you got to it via GitHub).
They also have a Chrome extension, which adds a button inside GH to open it in Gitpod, so something similar would work quite nicely here too, where you have a button that could also have some basic information on it, relevant to Codeponder:

WDYT?

[benawad]

Grabbing profile information from GitHub is nice.

How can we avoid being too similar to upwork?

I would like to try to setup a system that requires no (or very little) admin/support.

@bengry I like that and added them: #3

[audiBookning]

How can we avoid being too similar to upwork?

One would have to change the business model.
upwork's is more in line with an online service that principally sells tools to solve problems in exchange for money.
There are much more alternatives out there. One that has been very successful is the gamification strategy used by for example by stackoverflow and co.

• The main service is free and public which let the users contributing have something to show/brag to others/employers. So their stackoverflow profile is the same as a portfolio
• Many users also simply like to help others. And answering is one of the best ways to learn.
  (i personally love and respect stackoverflow. I think that they have done a great work. Do not let my earlier word like 'brag' give an erroneous impression).
• The whole interactions are awarded points, badges, etc which serves to ranks and promote the users.
• ...

As for monetization, this is good read: What is Stack Overflow's business model?
tltr (taken from the aproved answer):

• Job listings (e.g. the traditional classified ad model)
  http://careers.stackoverflow.com/employer/about-listings
• CV Search (e.g. the new-fangled and IMO vastly superior dating model)
  http://careers.stackoverflow.com/employer/about-search
• Traditional, but respectful (e.g. no animation or flash or pop-anything) display advertising on SO, SF, and to a lesser extent SU. http://stackexchange.com/about/contact
• Stack Overflow for Teams

[benawad]

I think I like that business model better

[audiBookning]

This might not be the best place to put this comment, but it involves several random ideas and i do not see the necessity to open new issues. And it does have some relevance to decide the specs...

I have seen your new video and i do like your idea. You probably will have much more work to do, but i have no doubt that it will be rewarding.

Here are some things that may help:

• VS Code has a web version of its editor that could be used in its entirety as a package or as inspiration: Monaco Editor and one can see a demo here. Many other alternatives exist ...
• to get the code from github one can use the Graphql API. Some example (to quickly demo without a server use the Github GraphiQl, you may be asked to give some permissions to the Github web app the first time...):
• get the code from a file (the code come in simple text format)

{
  repository(name: "codeponder", owner: "benawad") {
    object(expression: "master:packages/server/src/index.ts") {
      ... on Blob {
        text
        oid
      }
    }
  }
}

• get the files and their code in a given repo (this example goes 1 step deeper in the tree)

{
  repository(name: "codeponder", owner: "benawad") {
    object(expression: "master:") {
      ... on Tree {
        entries {
          name
          type
          object {
            ... on Blob {
              text
            }
            ... on Tree {
              entries {
                name
                type
                object {
                  ... on Blob {
                    text
                  }
                }
              }
            }
          }
        }
      }
      
    }
  }
}

• to get the info on gist (unfortunately i do not see how to get the code...)

{
  user(login: "benawad") {
    avatarUrl
    bio
    company
    email
    gists(first: 5, orderBy: {field: CREATED_AT, direction: ASC}) {
      edges {
        node {
          ... on Gist {
            id
          }
          id
          description
          name
        }
      }
      totalCount
    }
  }
}

One thing to note is that a user do not have to get any special permission to access common data from other users