RFC: codeclimate.com - code metrics service

Petr Blaho pblaho at redhat.com
Thu Jul 26 19:10:44 UTC 2012


On Thursday, July 26, 2012 01:10:50 PM Matt Wagner wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 05:29:24PM +0200, Petr Blaho wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I would like to know your opinions regarding code metrics service
> > for Ruby applications -  https://codeclimate.com .
> <snip>
> > What I want to ask you is whether you can see benefit of using it for Aeolus Project (not only for Conductor)
> > or if you percieve this service only as a little toy.
> 
> I think this looks pretty nifty, and I don't see any downside to trying
> it out, though I'm not crazy about the idea of it sending emails to the
> list. (Just because there's already a ton of noise.)

I just tested that after change in code no email comes.
(Change already on codeclimate.)

I can subscribe to atom feed if I want.

> 
> I do think it's important that we take automated metrics as vague rules
> of thumb, versus hard scientific facts. If complexity goes way up, or
> readability goes way down, we should investigate. But if you extend a
> basic file to have it do some more complex tasks, and the complexity
> goes up a little, I don't think we should be alarmed.

You are right. I think this tool can only provide hint what can be problem.

> 
> I went to a talk Chad Fowler gave a while back, and he talked about a
> lot of this stuff. One of the more interesting projects to me was his
> own turbulence gem: https://github.com/chad/turbulence
> 
> The notion is to graph churn vs. complexity. I had a hard time getting
> it to work on Conductor and ended up forgetting about it. But he pointed
> out that there are instances of complex, unmaintainable code that "just
> work" and go years without needing anyone to touch them. What's really
> dangerous is high-complexity code that gets modified all the time.
> 

I agree that often changed code (class, file) is probably not well designed and coded
when it has huge complexity too.
I liked churn and I will look at turbulence.

> -- Matt

Thanks for your input...

-- 

With regards
Petr Blaho



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