Be My Peer Reviewer

“Getting lost is just another way of saying ‘going exploring.”
― Justina Chen, North of Beautiful

Today, I finished the 25th lesson from Bob Taber’s “Core C# Fundamentals” course. A total of 22 hours of video instruction on the most basic, beginner-level concepts of the .NET framework.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my novice background in programming, coupled with zero prior experience to object-oriented design, has made this journey of self-study somewhat daunting. The obvious lack of technical knowledge aside, I feel like my questions and observations will be in the realm of irrelevance: that the entire programming world is light-years ahead. Who has time for a novice? I don’t like feeling useless and alone.

Armed with 22 hours of knowledge in writing simple console applications in C#, I have a request: would you be my peer reviewer?

I’d like to write a program that you request of me, then turn it in for you to peer review my code. This would give me the chance to practice writing a simple application that isn’t my own… something I haven’t already thought of in some capacity. Then, I could get feedback on my learning, which is something that I’m desperate for right now.

Given my needs and experience thus far, I request we stick to the following parameters:

• The program should be a basic C# console application (I’m not yet comfortable with designing a UI (e.g., WPF application) and event-driven programming). It can do whatever you feel is appropriate for a beginner’s exercise!

• For size, something that would take you — the smart, experienced, talented programmer — just a day (or less) to write is probably perfect for me. If it takes me weeks to create, so be it…

• For requirements, I would prefer a problem-solving approach, similar to what we advocate for with Agile product development. I’d rather not code to requirements, but rather, try to be creative and deliver the simplest thing possible

• Be patient with me, especially when I present my code to you. This is no small measure of making myself vulnerable, at least, from my perspective.

• Finally, I would like to write about our experience with this journey. I will ask your comfort with my disclosing details of our interaction, thoughts, feelings, and other “puppies and kittens” fluffy-mushy stuff.

If you would like to participate in my learning, please let me know through comments to this post or email me directly: zbonaker@gmail.com

You have my word that I will respond to you and be grateful that you’re there!