InnerWorkings White Paper Sample

It has been well demonstrated that students who are given immediate feedback following a practical task show an improved understanding of the link between theory and practical work, and enhanced confidence in their ability. Constructive feedback also helps developers move beyond basic knowledge by encouraging them to use metacognitive or adaptive skills in troubleshooting solutions.

While some organizations do their best to facilitate feedback through code reviews and mentoring, this approach is often problematic. For example, the designated coding expert may not be available to the learner, they may lack the required expertise for a particular problem, and developers often express a general distrust of such reviews. From a productivity perspective, there can also be conflicts when valuable senior developer time is taken up with helping less-experienced team members, rather than contributing to your code base.

An innovative, automated tool for reviewing code in a safe learning environment could help organizations to bridge this gap. Described as a code-judging engine, this unique tool assesses the learner’s ability to complete typical programming tasks. The engine analyzes the submitted code in real time, providing immediate and objective feedback to the developer on how their code needs to be fixed. In addition, results are automatically aggregated to a learning platform so that software managers can create reports based on current data and monitor trends over time.