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Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase

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Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase

#91

Post by boulos »

globular-toast wrote: post #74
boulos wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Way back when I was in school and much less confident than I a now, it was actually comments like yours that hurt the most. What you're essentially saying is "I know what was said is true and I don't dispute that, but you shouldn't have said it". For me this was like a second blow. Criticism always hurts, but at least the first guy thought I was tough enough to take it. You, on the other hand, not only agree with the…

> but you shouldn't have said it

Isn’t quite right. “You shouldn’t have said it like that”.

I totally agree that criticism is necessary, and that pandering doesn’t help people. Being constructive is just more productive. If the goal is to get the person to change what they’re doing, be constructive.

For example, “instead of repeating ‘package.json’, the labels should be semantic (e.g., )” would have been constructive.

Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase

#92

Post by [deleted] »

globular-toast wrote: post #90
skinnymuch wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are reading way too into the post you responded to. At no point did they agree that the OP is speaking the truth. They said to rephrase it to not just be negativity. But constructive too. You then bring up safe spaces which is irrelevant. It appears you had an agenda from the get go and are attempting to create a narrative here.

> They said to rephrase it to not just be negativity. But constructive too. On the one hand I agree with you and I personally always try to be positive whenever possible. But nobody owes you constructive criticism and sometimes it's just not possible to think of anything positive. An attitude of "no negativity here" will just create a culture of yes men which isn't actually constructive at all. I have no "agenda". I…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase

#93

Post by taeric »

withinboredom wrote: post #89
taeric wrote: post #51

I really really want to like these sorts of visualizations. But they just fall flat on me. The "you can see really quickly..." text is scrolling by and I'm like... "Nope, that picture still means nothing to me." :(. It starts highlighting different parts and I'm completely at a loss on what is highlighted. I do think this can be very effective once I'm trained on it. Such that I plan to play with it. But I just don't…

Anecdotally, I don’t visualize my code, however there is a sense of distance and depth between things (in the functional sense, not the lexical sense). I feel like this visualization goes a long way to showing the distance I feel when working on the code, but that’s only because the visualization captures the lexical distance and we generally group functionally close things together.

I don't have a sense of depth at all. I do have some concept of linearity of the control flow. But, it is a shallow knowledge that I couldn't visualize or even describe using visual terms.

I also confess that I think my best understanding from code is not at all linear in the textual representation, either. Sure, small code fragments are easy to reason about in a top down, left right fashion. But most of my understanding is a lot more disconnected than that.

Frustrating, as I do like pure functions, when I can get them. But... I also like knowing what the "metaphor" for a program is such that I can also reason about what it is doing.

This is best termed for me, ironically, in a graphical sense. Seeing a cube that is rotated 45 degrees is easier to understand in a Logo like language where the directions are the same, except for the initial condition. (I may just have a soft spot for Turtle Graphics. :D)

Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase

#95

Post by pvillano »

hsn915 wrote: post #56

I honestly don't understand the point of this. Is it just a visualization of the directory structure? I expect code visualization to more or less ignore the file structure and focus on semantic analysis. For example, show the major components of the system and how they interact. Perhaps the major components are represented by some kind of a module, or a collection of modules. I don't have any concrete ideas. But I wa…

ah, but is there a generalizable way to do this? Every code base has files and directories.

Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase

#97

Post by pizza »

dvt wrote: post #42

Apologies 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…

I admire the people who work on pet projects like this one and share them with the world despite getting criticism that is just barely constructive. These are merely design issues- not things that stem from it being a terrible idea. It's a good idea that just needs a v2 design, there is no need to go on a diatribe about unrelated events, this was clearly just someone taking an idea they thought could be valuable and sharing it with others in the hopes they might gain value from it also.

I have needed quick visual fingerprints of repos for a very long time, even just a crude outlay of the filesizes was what I needed but this provides even more. I just don't like the tone of this criticism, and nobody would ever do Show HN's ever again if "it's just not a good visualization and no one will ever seriously use this" was the standard for commentary.

Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase

#98

Post by withinboredom »

taeric wrote: post #93
withinboredom wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I don’t visualize my code, however there is a sense of distance and depth between things (in the functional sense, not the lexical sense). I feel like this visualization goes a long way to showing the distance I feel when working on the code, but that’s only because the visualization captures the lexical distance and we generally group functionally close things together.

I don't have a sense of depth at all. I do have some concept of linearity of the control flow. But, it is a shallow knowledge that I couldn't visualize or even describe using visual terms. I also confess that I think my best understanding from code is not at all linear in the textual representation, either. Sure, small code fragments are easy to reason about in a top down, left right fashion. But most of my understan…

Interesting! My sense of “depth” is highly correlated to how “foundational” the code is. Meaning that changing “deep” code will require changing lots of things to keep things working or may break unrelated things far away (sorta like brittleness).

Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase

#99

Post by taeric »

withinboredom wrote: post #98
taeric wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a sense of depth at all. I do have some concept of linearity of the control flow. But, it is a shallow knowledge that I couldn't visualize or even describe using visual terms. I also confess that I think my best understanding from code is not at all linear in the textual representation, either. Sure, small code fragments are easy to reason about in a top down, left right fashion. But most of my understan…

Interesting! My sense of “depth” is highly correlated to how “foundational” the code is. Meaning that changing “deep” code will require changing lots of things to keep things working or may break unrelated things far away (sorta like brittleness).

This makes some sense. That said, I also view it similar to how you would consider a keystone on an arch. That is, it may be something at the surface, not necessarily down below. (Which gives the tell that I view depth as down. I'm realizing as I type this that that is not necessarily true.)

Re: Show HN: Visualizing a Codebase

#100

Post by alexbit2019 »

cameronbrown wrote: post #29

Is there anything like this, but for visualising the connections between git commits, files, GitHub issues, maybe even classes etc...?

like a knowledge graph or something? if yes, im working on a similar concept (collecting facts and interedependencies among those from various sources: code elements, git, github issues, etc) lets chat if you are interested to brainstorm about it https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexbit/ https://calendly.com/alex-from-intuita/15min
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