In a world where securing summer internships / SWE jobs has become increasingly challenging, we recognised the need for a platform that could simulate the experience of a virtual workplace.
"Looks Bad To Me" (LBTM) was born out of the desire to prepare aspiring developers for the unpredictable nature of code reviews and feedback in a fun and engaging manner. Drawing inspiration from real-life experiences, we aimed to create a game that not only hones technical skills but also toughens individuals for the sometimes harsh realities of the professional world.
We wanted to build something to insult programmers in a harsh way similar to that of a toxic workplace environment :D.
LBTM is a game designed to simulate a virtual workplace environment where participants submit their code for review.
LBTM was crafted using the T3 Stack, a popular tech stack for modern web development.
We also made use of TTS, OpenAI and Similarity Algorithms, integrated code sandboxes and animation libraries our website.
Building LBTM presented several challenges, including:
We came up with multiple ideas for how to deliver the game to the user, including a VS Code extension, a web app, and a GitHub Actions bot. We eventually settled on a web app, but we still plan to build a VS Code extension in the future.
Generating the right feedback / code review comments for each submission required a lot of trial and error, tweaking prompts along the way.
Detecting when the code submitted by the user is "correct" is a non-trivial task, and we had to make several design decisions to ensure that the game is fair.
We're proud of the storyline we created for the game, and we think it adds a lot of character to the game.
The design of the game is something that we're proud of given the time constraints of the hackathon, and our lack of experience of developing games.
HOW NOT TO CODE REVIEW:
In the process of developing, we broke every rule for collaborating on code.
- No PR reviews.
- Actually, no PRs - we pushed to
maindirectly.
- Voice Interaction: We want to allow the user to respond to the code review comments using voice, to simulate a real-life interaction (something few of us have had).
- More Levels: We want to add better levels to the game.
We also wanted to explore some of the ideas we abandoned at the beginning of the hackathon:
- VS Code Extension: We want to build a VS Code "Clippy" like extension that can provide feedback in real-time as the user is coding.
- GitHub Actions: We want to integrate GitHub Actions to automate the process of generating code review comments.