Dealing with issues

I made explainer.js, a CLI tool to processes a file and output the code blocks along with explanation. So something that can be helpful if you have no clue what's going on in a file.
Built using Commander.js and Groq SDK!
Check it out @ https://github.com/aamfahim/explainer.js

Instant Response

For code review my partner @sych_andrii aka Andrii and I used discord call feature. Usually, for code reviews I prefer sync approach. Hopping on a video call and screen sharing and doing it live can help fast track the process as opposed to doing it asynchronously in a git issue. Although asynchronous can also be viable if there is a lot of details but that is rarely the case. So, if possible I prefer to do it synchronously.

Not our first rodeo

Both of us are very familiar with code review. Both of us have had reviewed each other's code. I think the review part was much easier since we knew each other before hand.

I'll do yours first, You do mine after

As the title suggests. My partner reviewed my code first. Since most of my issues were README.md related, he had a lot of questions. And I let him use with my tool. As he wanted, initial issue was he trying to use OpenAI API key, but Groq was throwing errors. So, we tried it with Groq generated API key and it worked. Then we tried OpenAI base URL which was working (technically) but response was indicating the base url provided was not correct. Then we tried different models and discovered we can only use Groq supported models.

These are the issues he filed on my repo

Issues filed on my repo

1. https://github.com/aamfahim/explainer.js/issues/9 README.md was generated in a hurry so it had a lot of in accurate information and it was incorrect in some places as well.
2. https://github.com/aamfahim/explainer.js/issues/10 Andrii tried to use gpt-4o model but I dont think Groq supports that. Then we tried a supported model which was for content safety which gave him the output on the issue. So, I had to mention the limitations in README.md as well.
3. https://github.com/aamfahim/explainer.js/issues/11 The --outout was not implemented yet but it was in the README.md and help description.
4. https://github.com/aamfahim/explainer.js/issues/12 -t flag was not being parsed properly
5. https://github.com/aamfahim/explainer.js/issues/13 The description was not clear about the expected argument was file path.

WSL or Powershell?

So, after that it was my turn to review. First road block was the installation. Initially I was using my default terminal, WSL with Ubuntu as my distro. And I'll be honest I don't use python a lot and my version was pretty old. And I don't even remember installing python. So because of version I couldn't install dependencies adn I couldn't update my version for some reason. So I switched to cmd and I know I have python installed on my windows laptop. So, I had to use cmd but the issue was that after every command I had to mention --python version. And to do that I had to also pass the file path which was somewhere in the file directory. After getting the setup run it was pretty good. I didn't find any bugs but I did have feedback about the readme structure. Also I requested a .env support since in order to run the tool I had to copy paste the API key every time which was kinda tedious. Also he did it in python. What a madlad!

Issues filed on Andrii's repo

1. https://github.com/SychAndrii/infusion/issues/8 I found README.md a bit hard to follow, so I added some recommendations.
2. https://github.com/SychAndrii/infusion/issues/9 Requested a .env support so that I don't have to paste the api every time I use it.
3. https://github.com/SychAndrii/infusion/issues/10 A specific part of help section needed a bit refactoring.
4. https://github.com/SychAndrii/infusion/issues/11 If the file has unrelated content sometimes it would throw error sometimes it would not.

Was it all fixed?

I fixed all my issues. It didn't take a lot of time since the issues were pretty simple. Most to the work was going through commander.js docs. Did some refactoring in between as well.

What did you learn through the process of doing the testing and reviewing?

Lessons learned

Sometimes its easy to get lost in the sauce while developing. I was so focused on making the code more clean I put README.md as a second thought. I think along with the code, documentation should be also given the same importance. Also, using Pure JS in Node with ESM is NOT fun. Learned a lot things about pure JS that I never knew or forgot like, + is a shorthand for converting sting to appropriate data types and arguments is not available in arrow methods.And I wholeheartedly agree with this comment.

Comments

[Andrii Sych]

kinda based ngl