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Show HN: Archsense – Accurately generated architecture from the source code

by bolshchikov on 8/6/23, 9:47 AM with 44 comments

• by chrisandchris on 8/6/23, 1:16 PM

  Maybe it's just me, but I would never like to pay such an amount for a subscription of a service (they charge >300 if you use C#, as I do). I maybe want to analyze my architecture on this level a couple times a year. Why do I have to pay each month? I'm missing usage-based pricing today, everyone sticks everything into a subscription.

• by d_watt on 8/6/23, 11:34 AM

  I definitely want some innovation in this space.

  Does this actually track dependancies at the code level, or just at the module import level. EG if have a redis connection file that's imported to a service library file, and only 1 of 8 exposed methods from that service file use the imported Redis, will every file that imports that service library show a dependency to Redis, or just the ones that import the Redis based service.

  Also, quick feedback on your site, your hero image shows the view that turns me off these types of things. An overwhelming graph that sprawls 3 screens horizontally, and thus can't be reasoned about in one look. The ones further down the page are more compelling, but perhaps the 1st one is the only one that actually represents the project?

• by Scubabear68 on 8/6/23, 3:25 PM

  The most useful architecture diagrams for me are context diagrams (process boundaries and interactions), sequence diagrams for important detail, and ER diagrams for databases.

  This does not seem to create any of those, unless I am missing something. This seems to mostly speak to code dependencies. Which is useful, but probably not $300/month useful.

  A typical architecture diagram will show you ingress points, API gateways and the like, where your app servers or web servers or whatever are, databases, eventing systems, etc and how they speak to each other. This doesn’t seem to do that, and it generally is not possible to generate such a thing automatically because there are too many dynamic pieces to track, or there are manual steps. Also, as others have stated, good architecture documentation requires thought and experience on what to highlight and what to omit or group together.

• by kykeonaut on 8/6/23, 2:39 PM

  It would seem that some of their tools are open source [0].

  [0] https://github.com/ArchSense/archsense-mono

• by not_skynet on 8/6/23, 9:51 PM

  going to shamelessly plug my library for python architecture visualization here: https://github.com/mivanit/dep-graph-viz

• by mpweiher on 8/7/23, 7:45 AM

  "generating architecture diagrams directly from the code - the source of truth." becomes a lot easier when the source code is the architecture.

  When you can express the architecture directly in the code using an architectural programming language.

  https://objective.st

• by btbuildem on 8/7/23, 2:27 AM

  I think this is more code archeology than architecture, no?

  I can see the utility of it for onboarding new team members - instead of chasing down stale docs, one gets a look at the state of the codebase as it is today.

  It probably helps to spot problematic / unintended dependencies and the like as well.

• by le-mark on 8/6/23, 12:12 PM

  Interesting, what languages are supported? I did not see a list, only the comment “multiple languages supported”. As others said diagrams sell but notoriously hard in practice due to the “hair ball” problem.

• by gabereiser on 8/6/23, 2:52 PM

  This is awesome. This doesn’t solve the justification premise but it does show you definitively that your software architecture is a hairball mess. Often I ask dev teams, “show me your architecture” and get back vague boxes of even vaguer labeled components. This is cool because you can see the dependencies and structure and can devise a view of your architecture from that. However, this is just one aspect to your architecture - the rest is how you host it, how you support it, how you deploy it, and how you develop it.

• by debarshri on 8/6/23, 3:32 PM

  Just checked out. Where this can be useful is generating the system architecture for SOC2 and other compliance frameworks.

  At ~$1800/year it is fairly expensive.

• by jtwaleson on 8/6/23, 2:20 PM

  Looks like a good start! We definitely need more documentation that does not go stale.

  Is this for single repository? If so, do you have any plans for visualizing multiple repos?

• by vee_jay on 8/6/23, 12:18 PM

  It'd have been more compelling with a good looking graph. Better to have a video showing the demo instead of a "Request a Demo" button.

• by morningsam on 8/6/23, 1:38 PM

  I'm sure all of us working with distributed systems have had this exact idea at least once, good to see someone actually did it.

• by bdg on 8/6/23, 12:32 PM

  How do they solve the Code-Model gap?

• by alex_lav on 8/6/23, 10:09 PM

  Looks great, but 159 a month to even use the tool at all is an instant no.

• by chrisjj on 8/6/23, 11:21 AM

  This is hugely misguided. Architecture comes before implementation, not after. A tool that encourages a view of the structure of the implemenatation to be mistaken for architecture is a tool for failure.

  Whatever next?? Make your code edits on source accurately generated from the binary?? :)

• by nikolay on 8/7/23, 4:37 PM

  I am sorry, but these busy diagrams are not helpful at all.