CodeStream - Discuss, review, and understand code from inside your IDE

•7yr ago

CodeStream's cloud-based service and IDE plugins help dev teams discuss, review, and understand code. Enhance your existing services by connecting them to your source tree, and capture knowledge about your codebase while streamlining existing workflows.

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Buglife

Our team has been using the IntelliJ beta for a few weeks, and... how did this kind of tool never exist until now? We used to copy-pasta code back & forth between Slack & our IDE just to ask each other questions, and it seriously feels like we just woke up out of the dark ages with this tool. Like, this is just how things should work. Period. Oh, and bookmarks are amazing. Thought they'd be useless (I can temporarily comment my own code, right?), but turns out to be a total game-changer when I need to grok new codebases.

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7yr ago

CodeStream

Maker

Hi everyone! Understanding code that you didn’t write can be hard. We built CodeStream to make it easier to ask questions and get answers about how specific code works, and save those interactions where they below: with the code for the benefit of everyone one the team -- whether it’s next week, next month, or next year. If you’ve ever looked at some code and had the question “what is going on here?” you'll appreciate what we're trying to do. So please download CodeStream, try it out, and let me know what you think!

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7yr ago

Zendesk

I've got to admit, whenever i'm looking at a chunk of code and need to ask clarifying question, my workflow was to find the file in Github, then find the line, click on it, go back to Slack and then message the person I wanted to ask the question. Usually by this time, I forget what i was about to ask :) This product addresses one of the biggest problem i've faced working for a large organisation. Slack has become a massive pain to deal with with so much non-important but interesting stuff to distract you from getting shit done. I can still be on my editor and talk about code, and not deal with the slack social banter? Sign me up! PS: I can't use this at work, but i'm going to give it a shot on my slack workspace/GitHub project. Thanks for making it and good luck!

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7yr ago

CodeStream

Maker

@kunday thanks for the thoughtful reply. This is exactly one of the use-cases we hope to simplify with CodeStream, although our larger mission is to SAVE that information in a way that can benefit the next developer on your team who might have the same question. CodeStream tags blocks of your code with the ID of the slack conversation thread, so that when any developer opens that file, our plugin can show you the discussion about that code. We implemented a "comment drift" algorithm to place that comment in the right place in your file, so if you commented on line 100 in one version of the file (let's say where a function started) but then in a future commit added 10 lines of new code above that, then CodeStream keeps your comment in sync with line 110. This way we can turn your conversation into documentation.

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7yr ago

EnvKey

This is a really cool new approach to documentation. As opposed to comments (which tend to quickly get outdated) or dry and lifeless API docs, CodeStream lets you peek behind the curtains and understand the thought processes and discussions that underly tricky sections of code through multiple iterations. These discussions are currently taking place in Slack or other tools, but because they lack any connection to the code, they aren’t easily discoverable to a developer. CodeStream fixes this by integrating at the IDE level, making all that meta-knowledge that used to disappear into the ether feel like a direct extension of the codebase.

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7yr ago

Ditto on many of the comments I've seen on this site and others about CodeStream: once you use it, you're baffled how it didn't exist previously. It's that fundamentally useful.

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7yr ago

CodeStream

Maker

@howard_howard Thanks for the comment. We actually get that reaction a lot, especially after doing a demo. To be honest when we first thought of the product we were sure someone had done it before, but it turns out nobody had. I guess somebody had to be first?

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7yr ago