Weird seeing this as a Show HN. That said: since MS and GitHub are the same company… one of the things I really want is to be able to opt in to reference/search into dependencies. I don’t need visualization, I need “yes show me node_modules/*/*.js when normally I wouldn’t want that.” I use a VSCode extension that does this in the file browser, but I want it across everything that determines whether something is hidden.
Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase
61–70 of 101 posts
Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase
#62Now if we can just click on those circles and start coding.
Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase
#63Perhaps it's not fair, but the first repo I thought of trying, aws/aws-cli caused it to freeze my browser's tab. When it finally unfroze, I'm presented with a few large circles and way too many tiny dots to be useful.
Guess there's an upper limit on the size of the repo, or perhaps it's more geared to different "shapes" of layouts.
Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase
#64Apologies for the hot take, but imo GitHub has been really knocking it out of the park with terrible ideas lately (remember how everyone fell all over themselves during the Copilot release?). This is an absolutely worthless visualization that only impresses those that haven't heavily worked with visualizations. A few points right off the bat: - Labels are way too small, so you'll need to zoom in.. - ...but if you zoo…
The guy literally says he timeboxed his exploration on this experiment . I think it's pretty cool and would love to have the option to navigate repositories like this.
...for the HNers who love to talk about how sexism or implicit bias doesn't exist in tech...
Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase
#65Apologies for the hot take, but imo GitHub has been really knocking it out of the park with terrible ideas lately (remember how everyone fell all over themselves during the Copilot release?). This is an absolutely worthless visualization that only impresses those that haven't heavily worked with visualizations. A few points right off the bat: - Labels are way too small, so you'll need to zoom in.. - ...but if you zoo…
This is a Show HN post. While you have valid criticisms (small labels, using filenames as labels produces lots of package.json, etc.), the way you shared it certainly violates the site guidelines (“Be kind”).
You knew you were being harsh and let your emotional response get to you. But, you should remind yourself that a person was on the other side of this post, and she cared enough to share it. Even if you feel the visualization is unacceptably bad, you should seek to find a way to provide constructive criticism. You’ve got the beginnings of actionable feedback, it’s just covered in invective language (though directed at the work not the person, so that’s something!).
Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% cpu for me, browser tab uses 3+ GB ram, chromium hangs then crashes
oh no! My best guess would be that there are many element-heavy SVGs on the page. I was hoping for better performance, since the files will almost definitely be smaller than large raster images, but there are likely older browsers that have trouble with that. I'll look into it, thanks for the report!
Android 11: Firefox, Chrome and viewing in HN app all crash
Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase
#67I prefer tree.
Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase
#68This is cool . I remember using “Understand for C++” that does something like this , a full source code graph visualization- function flow etc. This of course starts as a folder visualization , but I see the value- seeing the big picture
Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase
#69Apologies for the hot take, but imo GitHub has been really knocking it out of the park with terrible ideas lately (remember how everyone fell all over themselves during the Copilot release?). This is an absolutely worthless visualization that only impresses those that haven't heavily worked with visualizations. A few points right off the bat: - Labels are way too small, so you'll need to zoom in.. - ...but if you zoo…
As a tool for exploring a repo it does have some flaws in navigating, but as a tool for comparing the complexity of two repos it looks very useful. It's immediately obvious where the depth, complexity and 'weight' of something lies. That's useful.
Plus, even if the result isn't perfect, the fact people are exploring alternatives to a tree structure is great, because trees suck for anything that's broad and deep, especially in a language you're new to that doesn't have familiar patterns.
Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase
#70Random nitpick: the issue with color coding files is that you may have many different file types leading to colors that overlap.
Case in point in the author's create-react-app example: in one of the scrolling "comment boxes", the author calls out that the "tasks/" folder is mainly CSS files which made me raise an eyebrow...why would a tasks folder be mainly CSS files? -- and upon closer inspection of the colored legend .sh files are a VERY similar green. Just to satisfy my curiosity I visited the repo and sure enough, it was just .sh files, without a single .css file.
It makes me doubt the experience of the author...how can a folder called tasks/ (in any repo) be .css files?