Onboarding into a new codebase 👋

Today's topic:

Onboarding into a new codebase

As a new hire / contractor for a freelance project

From JP:

• Reviewing other people's PRs on a new codebase
• Submitting your first PR
• Understanding how data flows through the app
  • I've found that the organization of the code and the quality of abstractions makes or breaks this point
• Ramping up complexity of feature stories that you can tackle. How do you get there?

From John:

• First — Understand the domain, talk with team, read books, use competitor software, language in that domain.
• Then — Understand the software
  • Read the Docs, all that you can get your hands on
  • Review closed issues / tickets, try to understand the language /culture of the team
  • Review the tests, this is a good place to start if there is any, especially integration or feature tests that are higher level
  • Find the "God" objects if you can.
  • Write docs as you go, great way to get it into your head

Onboarding someone else onto a new codebase

From JP

• Hiring contractors for a project
• Onboarding new hires
• Reviewing new hires' pull requests **it's own episode maybe? Code Review?**
• How do you onboard someone else?
  • I think domain context is important

From John

• Support the advise given above! It's just the reverse
• First: Domain Context
• Then —
  • Provide Docs
  • Tests
  • Simple first issue
• Pair on the onboarding Dev's first PR VS sink or swim
• Try to demonstrate what tools and process you use in a project

Picks

JP: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/meeter-fast-call-initiation/id1510445899?l=en&mt=12

John:

• Rails View Components
• It's a new pattern in rails to produce reusable front end "Partials" but more abstracted and re-usable.
• This pattern plus stimulus.js is really magic.

Episode source