Forem: Necoline

Full Code Reviews in CodeSandbox

Necoline — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 16:40:20 +0000

At CodeSandbox, we run your code in our cloud infrastructure, configure the environment for you and keep your code always ready, behind a shareable URL. Give it a try with this Next.js example or import your GitHub repo!

The way we review PRs hasn’t changed much in the last few decades. But that doesn’t mean it should remain the way it is

If we zoom into the process itself, it quickly becomes clear it’s highly inefficient for both the person requesting a review and those reviewing it.

Typically, the person creating the PR will try to organize their work into meaningful commits, provide some context in the description, and then add reviewers. Those reviewing the PR will likely need to stash the changes of their current work before spinning up the review branch locally, and then hop between their local editor and GitHub to reference any prior conversation.

Even though this is status quo, each step of the way opens the door to context-switching, fragmented communication and ambiguity. So that’s why we’re thrilled to present CodeSandbox as an all-in-one solution for code reviews 🎉

The Cost of Review Chaos

As we found in our recent report on “The State of Code Reviews”, one of the main frustrations of the code review process is context switching. More than breaking your current flow, stopping your work to checkout another branch locally is a significant time sink—especially when you have to tinker with the setup if something is not up-to-date.

Then, spinning up a dev server to visually inspect the changes may result in 5+ minutes of idle time waiting for the server to start. And to cap it all off, communication is often scattered between GitHub, Slack, Jira and synchronous meetings—which builds up ambiguity and frustration for everyone involved.

Multiply all this by the number of reviews done per week and you’ll likely land on 1-5 hours lost every week for each developer in the company. Of course, some developers might choose to avoid dealing with all of this and just check the code diffs and “LGTM!”.

Suffice it to say, this is far from ideal.

Code Reviews in CodeSandbox

As a team of developers, we have felt this pain at CodeSandbox. So we decided to build a PR review workflow that solves what we have identified as the fundamental problems of code reviews:

Context switching: This breaks the coding flow and siphons energy from developers.
Idle time: Setting up and running a branch locally takes too much time and is prone to errors and inconsistencies.
Lost context: Scattered communication leads to loss of context, ambiguity, cop-out reviews, and lower code quality.

Thanks to the instant cloud development environments provided by the “new” version of CodeSandbox, we are giving a dedicated microVM to every branch (and every PR) while making sure that it resumes in 1 second. And if you configure our GitHub App, we automatically comment on every PR with a link to this microVM, so you can start reviewing immediately.

This is a game-changer. It means that you’ll never have to wait for a dev server ever again. Plus, because we run it all in our cloud infra, you can open as many simultaneous branches as you’d like, each with its own dev server running. Then, you can share them with a URL with any team member so they can access them just as quickly—either through our web editor, VS Code, or our iOS app.

While this already brings a lot of value, we still wanted a way to improve problem #3: communication. And that’s the latest major update we’ve brought to CodeSandbox: built-in review functionality.

This update brings all the review tooling you know and love, built into CodeSandbox with two-way sync with GitHub. Now, on the new PR review panel you will find:

a list of reviewers
the review state
a view of changes by file
support for adding line comments to diffs
AI-generated review messages
support for submitting reviews directly through the CodeSandbox UI.

After beta testing this with the first batch of teams, we have received overwhelmingly positive feedback and are happy to roll it out to everyone!

If you’re interested, don’t miss our tutorial on how to set things up. You simply need to set it up once per repo—and in most cases, it just takes 5 minutes!

A Win for Builders

Code reviews are probably not every developer’s cup of tea. But they’re still a crucial part of the development process.

So we are thrilled to empower builders to win back hours every week that they can reinvest in the parts of coding that they love.

Give it a try by importing a repo! We have a 14-day free trial you can use to test all our features.

And as always, do let us know how we can make this experience even better for you. Leave a message on Discord or tag @codesandbox on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you!

Merging Worlds and PRs

Necoline — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 15:54:04 +0000

Nestled between Lake Turkana and the wildlife reserves of the Kenyan Savanna lies the Chalbi Desert, home of the ancient nomadic Turkana tribe and a place of refuge for more than 200,000 refugees.

Kakuma was established as a refugee camp in 1992 when the “Lost Boys of Sudan” stoically traveled by foot to a place of safety. They were later joined by Ethiopian refugees fleeing their own conflict.

Over 20 years, this temporary resting place has developed into a tent city where thousands await return to their homes. They can wait for years and up to decades waiting for the opportunity to restart their lives. While they wait, their lives carry on. Children go to school, grow up, and develop professional skills that they can use to build their future.

Prior to working at CodeSandbox, I worked with an organization that supported such refugees. While on one of my trips to Kakuma, I met a group of young students looking to teach themselves to become web developers. They had just enough resources to bridge the gap of distance and technology to achieve their education goals. They had slow but stable internet, access to donated laptops, and a hunger to learn.

Once home, I donated my time as a remote instructor with this group. It was while I searched for tools for a remote web development course that I found CodeSandbox as the perfect solution for this class.

The Setup

There were a number of important factors to consider when looking for ways to create a workable learning environment. I evaluated dozens of tools and found that CodeSandbox met all of my unique education challenges.

Working with Old Machines

The students didn’t have computers powerful enough to run local development environments. And even if they could, it would be very difficult to help students navigate their first IDE from a distance.

By getting students onto sandboxes, we could jump straight into the code and introduce concepts of developer environments as we worked progressively through the lessons. I found this to be far more effective than the alternative which required a dedicated lesson for creating and running files locally and then in an editor.

Holding Class and Giving Assignments

I would create lessons in the form of lectures with simple practices to illustrate development principles or I would build something as I described what was happening and why. Both lesson types were easily supported in CodeSandbox. I would create a sandbox, add my examples, and then hold a live session during the class so students could follow my movements.

When it was time for students to do their own practice, they simply had to fork the lesson sandbox and start working.

Building Student Portfolios

I would often give homework assignments which would be the beginnings of a project with commented sections for guidance. These projects, when forked into the students’ personal workspace, would then serve as the start of a portfolio of their skillsets that they could easily share or build on later.

Curriculum Development

As an instructor looking to build a curriculum that I could repeat, I found the dashboard organization of sandboxes to be incredibly helpful. I grouped my lessons and exercises under topics that I could pull from on future occasions.

If I expanded the class to more teachers, this would have been the perfect place for collaboration on lesson planning and sharing ideas.

The Experience

CodeSandbox allowed me to feel closer to these incredible students than I could have possibly hoped for. Being able to greet the class on a group call and then zoom into the individual work of the students let me feel like I was in the room with them.

The experience was not only great for me, but it also allowed the graduates to leave with a small, shareable portfolio of their work that they could take into their next venture.

It was a real joy and privilege to watch these students do with CodeSandbox what so many developers around the world are empowered to do: make their ideas come to life. Whether it was a photography website that captured the everyday moments of life in Kakuma or the beginnings of a commerce site to support their family business, the class showed me that these students, once given the tools and skills, can and will pave a path toward their own success.

If you’re curious about using CodeSandbox for teaching or learning how to code, have a look at our main benefits. We have a generous free plan and can also provide more flexible Pro plans for educators—talk to us for access.

Footnotes

The program I was teaching with is called Solidarity Initiative. If you are interested in learning more, you can check out their website here: https://sirafrica.org/

The iOS Release You Have Been Waiting For

Necoline — Wed, 04 May 2022 16:04:08 +0000

CodeSandbox Projects is now available on mobile. With CodeSandbox for iOS, you can take your projects with you wherever you go. Using an iPhone or iPad, you can now access our new cloud development platform in the comfort of a native iOS IDE.

When building CodeSandbox Projects, we set out to create a cloud development platform with the familiar speed and experience of CodeSandbox, yet also deeply integrated with your favorite tooling, and working on projects of any size. Projects is currently in beta and we are now ready to expand the experience to the mobile world.

Take a look inside the iOS App

CodeSandbox for iOS combines the crisp and ergonomic feel of a native IDE with the power and efficiencies of cloud development.

On iOS, keep up with ongoing project work with:

Smart Dashboards

Our dashboards help you manage your workflow and stay connected with your entire team. In one view, you can get an overview of your project and keep track of all branches.

IntelliSense

Go beyond syntax highlighting and autocomplete, with smart completions based on variable types, function definitions, and imported modules.

Live Previews

Easily spin up a preview of your app in your browser or open tools like Swagger or Storybook to track changes as you make them.

Real-time Collaboration

Enjoy both real-time and asynchronous collaboration with your team in the same file, with support for multiple clients.

Git Workflow

Full support for Git allows you to work on any existing project and work alongside any contributor, regardless of their developer environment.

Great ideas don’t always come to you while you are sitting at your desk. With this new mobile app, you can pick up where you left off on the web editor or on VS Code and keep the creativity flowing at your local cafe, on your commute, or while curled up on your couch with a cup of tea.

Get started now

Right now, CodeSandbox Projects is in Beta. You can sign up to the waitlist here. You can also jump in and explore your Sandboxes on the app in the meantime. Once you are in, you can simply import your projects or add a template project, invite your team members and get coding.

We look forward to welcoming you to this new piece of the Projects experience and hearing where your coding adventures take you.

Nevertheless, Necoline Coded

Necoline — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 17:08:32 +0000

I started/continued to code in 2019 because...

I started coding because I wanted to build tools for underserved communities
I continued because I was busy creating a tool for refugee aid workers in the field.

I deserve credit for...

Building an entire platform for my organization to boost school attendance and increases access to food for children (especially girls) in refugee camps.

I hope to see my school/work/developer/tech community...

I hope to see people in the dev community celebrate learning over knowledge.
I hope to see developers take care of themselves and others.
I hope to see work places reward people that show growth and dedication in their work.

Nevertheless, Necoline Coded

Necoline — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 17:08:00 +0000

I started/continued to code in 2019 because...

I started coding because I wanted to build tools for underserved communities
I continued because I was busy creating a tool for refugee aid workers in the field.

I deserve credit for...

Building an entire platform for my organization to boost school attendance and increases access to food for children (especially girls) in refugee camps.
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