How to do (recorded) codebase walkthroughs

[ashfurrow]

Continued from @orta's discussion here: #66

Key questions:

• Preparation required?
• How to construct a narrative?
• How to execute? (external mic, webcam, screenflow)

Feedback from last time: "couldn't hear questions." So maybe we should get people to be right beside me and the mic 😅

[orta]

The office acoustics aren't amazing, but they're better than before. I think the questions really is about having to slow down and request people get to, or are given a mic. It works well when I enforce that at Open Standups.

External mic + external webcam I think add a lot, then people can see the gesticulation and it's not just your face looking confused up close. Yeah, screen flow is always my choice WRT editing tools.

WRT code reviews I guess it's important to both know your audience, and your time constraints. I couldn't give a review of eigen in an hour to the rest of the team, but I could go through fundamentals like routing, view controller construction and iPad/iPhone differences. If it was to a new mobile hire, I bet in an hour I could get a very broad understanding of architecture and system patterns.

Making it interesting is hard. My tvOS stuff worked cause it was new, but it expected understanding of similar patterns. Lots of comparisons to iOS for example. Being able to take someone from where they've been to somewhere new is ideal.