Holy moly. Didn't expect to see this at the top of HN. Went to grab some dinner, and the ol' inbox is already starting to fill up. Thanks for the warm response.
To illuminate the rationale a bit more ... A lot of folks have asked for quick "gut checks", "sanity checks", and similar overviews of their codebases in the past, and this seems like a way to:
1) Help folks out in a way that doesn't entail a massive commitment or expense. Much of the time, when people are struggling with a thorny technical problem, an outside perspective and a bit of friendly advice is invaluable in getting it solved.
2) Get a lot of valuable exposure to different approaches in production apps, to learn as much as I teach.
3) A style of work that I can be productive with, even without a reliable internet connection, or offline entirely (a large problem these days).
So, it seemed like a fine idea to try. I'll keep y'all posted on how it goes. And although Code Reads will be entirely confidential, if any of the companies are interested in sharing theirs (perhaps to attract recruits) -- maybe I'll be able to post one or two up publicly.
"And although Code Reads will be entirely confidential, if any of the companies are interested in sharing theirs (perhaps to attract recruits) -- maybe I'll be able to post one or two up publicly."
Can you take a high-profile public project (like coffeescript or underscore/lodash or angularjs) and do a code read? (yes I'm aware that you are the man behind coffeescript and underscorejs but I'm sure you can find something in a code read)
I was one of those people, lol. To be honest, these things can only help. Rails advanced a lot with the Merb merger. (I'm not suggesting Backbone and Ember could or should merge, naturally ;-))
It would, I think, be instructive to see rough pricing guidelines. I am assuming that whilst you get a feel for the market these things are in a state of flux, but nice to see ballpark figures when thinking about whether your service could be relevant.
He probably has no idea what the demand is. If 60% of the Fortune 500 has code they want Jeremy Ashkenas to review, the pricing will be very different than if three ramen-profitable startups want it.
To illuminate the rationale a bit more ... A lot of folks have asked for quick "gut checks", "sanity checks", and similar overviews of their codebases in the past, and this seems like a way to:
1) Help folks out in a way that doesn't entail a massive commitment or expense. Much of the time, when people are struggling with a thorny technical problem, an outside perspective and a bit of friendly advice is invaluable in getting it solved.
2) Get a lot of valuable exposure to different approaches in production apps, to learn as much as I teach.
3) A style of work that I can be productive with, even without a reliable internet connection, or offline entirely (a large problem these days).
So, it seemed like a fine idea to try. I'll keep y'all posted on how it goes. And although Code Reads will be entirely confidential, if any of the companies are interested in sharing theirs (perhaps to attract recruits) -- maybe I'll be able to post one or two up publicly.