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Ask HN: What are some of the ways to learn codebases

by hhimanshu on 1/22/17, 11:54 PM with 5 comments

Last time https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8263402 article appeared in 2014, I wanted to see if there are methodologies that people have adopted not listed in this article? I would like to hear your experiences. Feel free to contribute here or at https://gist.github.com/hhimanshu/714962f4205d7dddc7e5991a86412805. I would make notes and update the page. Thanks

  • by gjvc on 1/23/17, 12:14 AM

    Learning a codebase requires fast navigation. ctags or a good IDE help with that.

  • by pizza on 1/23/17, 1:25 AM

    "Follow the money!" - but instead of money, follow the data;

    - sort source code by filesize

    - look at the large methods / code blocks

    - browse through the /examples/ and /tests/ dirs to familiarize yourself with typical usage

  • by zzzcpan on 1/23/17, 1:44 AM

    Runtime call tracing is the missing methodology. I haven't found anything better over the years and always implement them if I have to learn things quickly. Made one for nginx even.

  • by dsschnau on 1/24/17, 2:06 PM

    Biggest thing for me is to talk to whomever wrote it, or if they're not available, whomever has the most knowledge of the codebase.