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Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

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Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#31

Post by Attummm »

This sounds great.

Python is really great for quickly developing applications.

However, maintaining them is a real pain point—especially when it comes to packages and their dependencies.

Furthermore, because there isn’t a compile-time checker, function or method signatures can change unnoticed. Compilers are great for catching such issues at compile time rather than at runtime. Python does have mypy, which can play that role, but the package must support it. Currently, you are dependent on the package maintainer regarding their adherence to semver.

Maybe this project will be able to fill that hole.

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#32

Post by 0x63_Problems »

mathfailure wrote: post #30
adamc wrote: post #7

Having the example be a video that changes was confusing at first, and if you are going to show me something that is changing, I would like to be able to rewind to the beginning. But really I just think it's a bad idea to show something like that without making it obvious what it is.

What do you mean by "a video that changes"? I liked the video-example, it's way better than examples in many projects that use just text, when the tool does something quite complex that better be demonstrated in a video with a narrator explaining what's happening and why.

I actually made that change in response to their comment! It used to be a live GIF with no narration.

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#33

Post by 9question1 »

jlg23 wrote: post #28
byteknight wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the attempt but the reasoning of "it requires maintenance" is entirely moot. You have to do this regardless. Its just whether or not you publish it open-source. You are still saying, internally, this is good enough for customers, when you push it out. This is a (very) thinly veiled attempt at a closed garden of sorts, IMHO. Its a "clean" excuse for not giving away the milk for free, but it falls short on…

Looking at the license (MIT) we already got much more than what we paid for and the authors don't "have to" do anything but accept thanks of those who chose to be grateful for software they got for free.

This. It's ridiculous how often people complain about the design of free software. If you don't like it, just don't use it! Use something else! Build your own! Or fork it to work in the way you described that you'd prefer - you can do that yourself if you really want since the source is available

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#35

Post by godelski »

I've been surprised that there hasn't been much progress in code tracing. It's incredibly hard to jump into a new code base. Cscope and ctags are still used but uncommon. It's not common to see people use debuggers. I suspect this is a major reason why Python and interpreted languages are so popular. But as code bases have exploded we still haven't gotten much better than where we were over a decade ago. Yeah RAGs can help but I'm not sure are a huge improvement over tags. Maybe realistically regressed, relying more on print statement debugging. When do we improve from gdb, cscope, grep, awk, and find? (I'm aware of the improved version of those but listen carefully if that's what you're jumping to respond with)

So I'm really happy to see a project like this. Well done. Can't wait to see more

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#36

Post by goosejuice »

globular-toast wrote: post #22
VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conventions are widely used and Python is used successfully in numerous “large monoliths”. Saying that the conventions may as well not exist if they’re not enforced is demonstrably nonsense.

It depends on your team. If the whole team "gets it" then things will be fine. But if you've got a team with juniors or people happy to do whatever crap they or ChatGPT can come up with to make things work then it doesn't.

That says more about your process as a swe org than the technology you're using.

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#38

Post by Eisenstein »

9question1 wrote: post #33
jlg23 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the license (MIT) we already got much more than what we paid for and the authors don't "have to" do anything but accept thanks of those who chose to be grateful for software they got for free.

This. It's ridiculous how often people complain about the design of free software. If you don't like it, just don't use it! Use something else! Build your own! Or fork it to work in the way you described that you'd prefer - you can do that yourself if you really want since the source is available

It is totally valid to tell people not to criticize a project offered by someone who made it for their themselves or wants to offer the value to the public but doesn't have the resources to do everything perfectly. But this is not that, and I don't see a non-profit org behind it, so it appears to be something that is being offered on a quid pro quo basis. Thus we need to figure out where the value is being extracted and if the dev are cagey about it, that rings alarm bells.

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#39

Post by LtWorf »

9question1 wrote: post #33
jlg23 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the license (MIT) we already got much more than what we paid for and the authors don't "have to" do anything but accept thanks of those who chose to be grateful for software they got for free.

This. It's ridiculous how often people complain about the design of free software. If you don't like it, just don't use it! Use something else! Build your own! Or fork it to work in the way you described that you'd prefer - you can do that yourself if you really want since the source is available

So once can no longer comment on anything?

Re: Show HN: Tach – Visualize and untangle your Python codebase

#40

Post by ycombiredd »

0x63_Problems wrote: post #6
hansonkd wrote: post #4

Really excited to see this project gain traction. > Note that this graph is generated remotely with the contents of your `tach.toml` Isn't shipping off parts of your codebase to a 3rd party without warning in the CLI a security risk? Or in regulatory environments you get audited that your code was only stored on properly vetted services which is why some sales cycles for AI coding assistant tools are so long. It woul…

Co-author here, fair question! In short, we want to make the visualization UX as smooth as possible, and this is best done with a web app. The URLs use UUIDs, and the contents being sent don't include literal source code, only module names and Tach configuration. We will also delete graphs by UUID on request, and have done so in the past. That said, we do try to be up-front about this, which is why that disclaimer ex…

If it outputs DOT, I can recommend you visualize your graphs with PHART ( https://github.com/scottvr/phart/ )

I’m mostly kidding but incidentally PHART was born in order to visualize Python dependency graphs in-line in 7-bit ASCII because I wanted the functionality in my dependency analyzing code summarizing concatenator tool I was using to aid in pair-programming with ChatGPT and Claude when codebases started outgrowing useful context lengths. That tool is here https://github.com/scottvr/chimeracat/ (it is nowhere as slick-looking as OP’s app, but also that is by design.)

The first time someone in public said they were curious to see the chimeracat output for his company’s codebase was also the first time I considered “wow.. how do I make sure people know they can trust chimeracat isn’t stealing their code?” and started thinking of ways to give people that surety and safety for any app, because so realized that though it was my first time to think about how “code analysis” tools like this, it even linters, prettifier’s etc. are a fertile ground for subterfuge and espionage, it was no doubt not the first time the thought had occurred elsewhere, and likely to at least a handful of folks who would (and no doubt are) putting such tools out there in the wild.

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