I have noticed when people post example code illustrating some issue that they are having often they will gather a number of comments addressing the quality of the code they presented and not the actual problem asked. This is very helpful--if not well directed. Often, this is wasted effort since the asker is often not receptive and the code is often chopped down to something small to post leaving lots of rough edges.
In the old days you would see people asking questions like this on comp.lang.lisp and other parts of the comp.lang hierarchy. But that bit of the net kind of sank into the sewers of neglect. Is there a comparable one-stop-shop today?
I am partially asking for selfish reasons, I know how to write good idiomatic C, Lisp, O'Caml, and Java code. But I learned C++ pre-template and STL, those rusty skills are not really applicable to today's C++. I have picked up languages like Scala in a vacuum and get by, but am I really doing it correctly?
There are so many ways you can abuse a language, I am currently working against a codebase of Fortran written in C, and I recognize and loathe the "that guy" who wrote it. I don't want to be someone else's "that guy" if I can help it. Just because it works does not mean that one did not totally miss the boat on how it should have been done.
Do you seek out this type of critique? If so how, where and why? What types of benefits do you derive from it? How about abuse and trolls?
