Background
Automatic feedback on your code quality is a very nice thing. It can take the place of perhaps, but certainly supplement programmer to programmer code reviews. They produce useful insights, but you will often disagree with their claim.
Don’t fall into the trap of believing that you have to keep struggling until you get all A’s from any of these tools. Form your own opinion and realize that it’s ok to vehemently disagree with their reports!
Nice Code Analyzers
- Code Climate - A web site that constantly monitors your github repository and tells you in nice graphical reports how your code is. It even gives you a fun grade. Free for public repositories.
- Sandi Meter - Install locally as a gem. Performs a very limited (but quite revealing) check against the Sandi Metz 4 rules. I like this one because its very focused and with a simle check will catch many ugly programming habits.
- Reek - Install locally as a gem. Focused more on the so-called code smells. Now other than a handfull there’s no universally agreed upon smells. Here is the List of Smells that this package picks up. Here is an Exhausive List of Smell Related Links
- RuboCop - Install locally as a gem. Will analyze your code with a long, somewhat exessive list of “cops” and makes reports in different ways.