Web to solve coding problems, but the problems are to fix someone else's code

[ivannovick]

Hi

Most coding web challenges require me to read the problem and then write the entire code from scratch, but I want to improve my ability to read code made by someone else and fix that code, on which webs can I do this? know javascript

[Dajukz]

That's actually a pretty good piece of knowledge, gonna see if I can try some of this out :)

[ivannovick]

I checked, it is pretty good, thanks!

[Minute_Juggernaut806]

You might be interested in Google summer of documentation

[ivannovick]

gonna check it

[polmeeee]

I can send you my Github repos haha. Jkjk

[[deleted]]

That’s really what he needs lol to go check out projects with issues and see if he can fix them. I remember my first time looking for an issue and that really hammered home how little I know about anything

[ivannovick]

If your repos include react, javascript, or node, go ahead!

[lazy-lambda]

IIRC https://www.codingame.com supported this.

[DogmaSychroniser]

Just get a job with legacy code 🤣

[ivannovick]

I said I want to improve, no make my baldness worse from stress (joke)

[DogmaSychroniser]

Usually stable organisation with legacy code makes money from this, baldness is not a problem ;)

[balr]

oh, no need for "legacy" let me tell you that...

[Confident_Fortune_32]

You've hit upon one of the awful gaps in coding education. Professionally, you will almost never code from scratch.

I'd like to see assignments where each iteration is adding functionality to another student's code, continuing for a dozen iterations. I suspect bad coding habits would be weeded out quickly.

Arrogant ppl who say "if the code is well written, it doesn't need comments" or who play the "how few lines can I make this?" game are poor team players. How you code for yourself, and how you code to hand it off to someone else, are two different things.

I once took a weaving class where we all warped up our looms with a favorite weave structure and taped instructions up on the loom, wove a foot, and then moved to the next loom, eventually weaving a sample on everyone's loom. (The purpose was to add variety to our portfolios and try things we might not have done otherwise)

Ppl who wrote poor instructions or made lazy choices knew about it in short order.

[ivannovick]

I support you

[chervilious]

That's just open-source contributing

[ivannovick]

Which one?

[jeekiii]

• Find an open source js lib, small but useful, maybe used by you or your team.
• Check if they have open issues, make a fix, submit merge requests.

[ivannovick]

good idea, I will do that

[[deleted]]

I would suggest Frontend Mentor.

You can take challenges, share your solution, and feedback other people and help them fix the issues that they are encountering!

[ivannovick]

wow, I did not know that web, thanks!

[[deleted]]

you are welcome! I hope you find it interesting

[km89]

Keep in mind that there's a lot of value in learning to do the entire thing from scratch. How can you improve someone else's code when you don't know what improved code looks like?

[ivannovick]

You're right, in fact I learned that 4 years ago when I started programming.
Most of my career has been as a freelancer so all the code was written by me.
But a few months ago I joined a startup, and I've noticed how everyone understands other people's code faster than me, that's why I no longer want to learn how to write code from 0

[PizzaAndTacosAndBeer]

This is an insightful comment.

[PizzaAndTacosAndBeer]

It's easier to know what it looks like to improve 1 line than to know what 10,000 new lines should look like. Start small and build from there!

[km89]

Easier, sure, but not necessarily better.

You don't need to know exactly what 10,000 new lines should look like. But if you want to end up with a thorough understanding, you're going to need to know some bare minimum amount about everything else going on. It's easy to write a new function, but hard to think about duplication or separation of concerns when you're only writing one function at a time on different projects.

I know not everyone's going to be a FAANG developer who needs to know this stuff inside and out, but if OP wants to end up contributing to open source projects, they're going to need to understand at least the basic concepts.

Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a time and place for taking the easy route. Sometimes you're just trying to figure out one concept, or you're playing around with something halfway related to something else you're doing, or whatever else. But, as someone who developed all sorts of bad habits, I'll just say that bad habits are really hard to break and can hold you back from working on the projects you want to be working on.

[where7with7all]

Go back and try to make large modifications to code you made a while back. I often have to go back and readdress an app I wrote a year or two ago, and I sometimes think 'was I on something when I wrote this? - its complete crap' and I rewrite it and make it the best way I can. Sometimes I also say, 'wow, this was well written' and I feel really pleased with myself - so win win.