This Friday, at PyGotham, Jason Owen and I are co-presenting "Code Review, Forwards and Back". This is not a standard technical conference talk. It's a 25-minute play, basically a one-act.

 

The setting: an office conference room. The characters: a developer, who's written a chunk of new Python code, and a team lead, who's about to review it. You'll see the code. It's not great.

What happens if the reviewer waves it through, or lets conflict aversion get the best of them? What if the reviewer says it should be "better" but doesn't articulate how? What if the review is abrasive, or nitpicky, or laid-back? What if the reviewer rewrites the code right there and then? And if we fast-forward to the same team years later, how has this code reviewing style affected the quality and evolution of the codebase, and the team's culture, skill and sustainability?

See a fast-paced montage of ways things can go. Recognize patterns from your past and present. Learn scripts for phrasing criticism constructively. And laugh.

Or, to put it another way, it's Run Lola Run but about code review.

I was getting advice about this from a friend who's both an actor-playwright and a senior developer, and I may as well tell you what I told him, about why I want to do this. I have artistic and educational reasons.

Artistically: it's frustrating to me that there's such a limited range in how we persuade and teach each other in sessions at technical conferences. Most commonly I see conferences with lots of lectures, panel discussions, and live tool demonstrations. Those aren't very interactive, and so I welcome conferences who bring some variety into the mix on the axis of interactivity, such as hands-on workshops and trainings, and birds-of-a-feather discussion sessions. But also, we could be learning a lot more about spectacle from the giant field of endeavor that is all about entertaining people who are watching you perform on a stage.* We encapsulate wisdom as, e.g., songs and cartoons whose entertainment value helps us value and retain their lessons; Jason and I are interested in seeing how theater can do things a lecture can't do, can be like a demo of behavior, while talking about tech.

And educationally: especially when it comes to the emotionally fraught art of code review, the medium of theater seems like a promising way to encourage empathy in the viewer. Code review is a moment of great vulnerability, an opportunity for courage and healthy conflict. We only know ways to be if we can imagine them. Jason and I hope this play illustrates a few ways we can be.

So we're preparing that. I hope it goes all right.

* No actual stage in the conference room where we'll be performing. But, you know. Figurative stage.