As a mostly self-taught dev, it's really helpful to read code reviews like this....

solarmist · on Feb 23, 2022

Unfortunately, that was the biggest problem with Anki’s DB. It was done by feel by a self-taught dev.

And now he has spent years trying to slowly undo the stuff he baked into it at the lowest levels.

It's fine to do stuff independently without knowing, but please seek feedback and advice on crucial design decisions.

pessimizer · on Feb 23, 2022

> but please seek feedback and advice on crucial design decisions.

Or at least isolate them from the rest of the code. Of course, it's difficult to recognize which design decisions are crucial without already being an expert, so this sort of advice is probably silly. It's probably also the kind of advice that would have been more likely to strangle Anki in its crib rather than giving us the opportunity to discuss how a wildly successful program that has helped many people learn many things should improve its data model.

solarmist · on Feb 23, 2022

Yeah, it's a hard thing to judge and balance.

I'm not saying they need an expert or they shouldn't push forward anyway, but it's good to recognize when you're out of your depth and to get input when possible. There's a lot of value from just running something by someone else to see if they can understand it and if something occurs to them that would make things simpler.

Theaetetus · on Feb 23, 2022

[Author here.]

Thanks for the note! Unfortunately Eric's reference is not publicly available (as far as I know).

I'd love for more people to collect and publicize sets of commonly used code review notes.

Others here will know much more than I do about which publicly viewable projects have the best (public) feedback. Good luck!