The Review Roundup

What is happening?

As our course progress forward with open source and the life within open source, we had a task and an interesting exercise with our classmates, we pick a partner and share our GitHub Repo to review our code about the Release 0.1 progress.

Do you prefer an async or sync approach? Why?

Before answering this question, I want to introduce my partner Liam Hutchinson. Since both of our schedules wouldn't allow us for a live call or a meeting, we preferred an async approach. We used Discord as our platform for contact as we have been using it for communication since the start of this BSD course together.

What was it like testing and reviewing someone else's code?

Like our professor was saying, not all other professors will allow others to share their code in public, especially with classmates, as it can create issues with cheating and integrity. All thanks to our professor, we had the opportunity to discover the coding style and the approach, the way others think of a problem, and how they come up with a solution different from yours.

I really enjoyed this as this opens a new way of learning, understanding your mistakes, acknowledging their skill set of problem-solving, and making us think that "Oh yeah, this can be done this way too 🫢."

What I found in my partner's code, links below

So, this is not a complete version of the code of release 0.1, so it has its limitations. He made a README file generator with the help of Gorq AI in JavaScript, which is similar to what I did, but the language I used is Python. The couple of major problems that I found within his repo are:

It is lacking a README.md file, which stands as an introduction to the code he wrote.
Another issue was that it is missing the help flag, which is necessary when testing the functions or just knowing how many functions are present in the program.
The script only accepts a single file at a time. I believe as a README generator, it should have the ability to generate README for multiple files.

Links for Issues

Missing README.md file Issue 1
Command Line does not provide user with a help flag Issue 2
Program only accepts one file at a time Issue 3

Summary for partner's Issues

I have provided a brief description that will help him solve all the open issues he has. Also, for Issues 2 and 3, I have given him some suggestions to help him find a solution more quickly! As I am not an expert, I hope this preliminary review helps him improve his code and close all of these issues.

What my partner found in my code, and how I am planning to fix it for Release 0.1

I have a missing optional feature for the release 0.1, as I am still working on it. That requirement is yet to be satisfied. He gave me some ideas, so I plan to add the ability to use a custom API with my script.

Add an additional optional feature Issue 1

The next one is about allowing the user to use the program without an API Key. As of now, if the API is not initialized, it will not even run the program. My plan is to modify the code so that it prints out an error saying to add an API key to proceed further.

Allow the user to use the program even without an API key Issue 2

He also included a screenshot to help me understand better:

The third issue was about getting the file as an output. In my code, when the user specifies 2 files to have their README generated, it only produces one, which is of the last file, and overwrites the other. He also suggested including a feature in which the user can choose if they want the README for both files in one document or separate.

Allow multiple files to be specified Issue 3

What did I learn?

This was a fun yet interesting way of learning new concepts and how other people think. I really got the opportunity to compare my code and logic with his to better assist both of us at the same time and improve ourselves and our code. Also, I believe that this skill will come in handy when working in any open-source project. Without proper reviewing and editing, we can’t accept any code from any source. So I respect the fact that this is a vital skill as a software developer. I really want to thank my professor for this great opportunity.

AJO GEORGE 13-09-2024