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Nobody's just reading your code

akkartik.name

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Re: Nobody's just reading your code

#21

Post by mjevans »

One of the reasons I love golang* is how the entire source code for the standard library is just a few easy clicks away from the documentation on how to use it.

As an example: When I want to do something and the interfaces I'm seeing provide friction (XML parsing not /quite/ handling normal, slightly incorrect, HTML) I can get a better idea of what the library is doing behind the scenes. I got an example of how to use other exposed interfaces of the library as a tool kit for my own iteration (which added some state tracking and cleanup of that mess) instead of relying on it to decode everything and dump it back for me.

Other parts of the library are similar, maybe it does 90% of what your use case needs, and you can extend those interfaces with your own library to add the corner cases that are required in your specific use case.

*(even if it can be tedious at times because it's sort of a mid-level language; it abstracts some REALLY bread and butter things that probably can't be lived without, but it doesn't shield you from true complexity pitfalls)

Re: Nobody's just reading your code

#22

Post by SilentCrossing »

Interesting read, but I find comparing code to a map to simplistic. I would at least say that code is more like a puzzle of a map. You may or may not understand each puzzle piece and where it fits it. That is my experience with reading code.

Code is like Ogers and Ogers like Onions. They have layers of complexity :P

Re: Nobody's just reading your code

#23

Post by icebraining »

tobr wrote: post #9
bsimpson wrote: post #2

One of the things that sets a good programmer apart is the willingness to fearlessly dig into someone else's code. I've heard it said before that you're responsible for every line of code you ship to your users. It follows that you shouldn't treat your dependencies as black boxes. Getting a stack trace that's 3 or 4 levels deep in Django/React/ ? Dig under the covers and understand what's happening. Include that info…

I always get an uneasy feeling when this is not (practically) possible. Whenever I add a dependency to a project I will at least skim through the source to get an idea of what it is I’m adding, and it pleases me a lot when a library is well written and self contained enough that this does not mostly leave me confused or overwhelmed. There’s a similar reason why I have such mixed feelings about some build tools and co…

The output of gcc and clang probably don't look much like hand-written machine code either, though. Or, for that matter, the output of V8 and SpiderMonkey. You can't avoid the compilers :)

Re: Nobody's just reading your code

#24

Post by tobr »

icebraining wrote: post #23
tobr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always get an uneasy feeling when this is not (practically) possible. Whenever I add a dependency to a project I will at least skim through the source to get an idea of what it is I’m adding, and it pleases me a lot when a library is well written and self contained enough that this does not mostly leave me confused or overwhelmed. There’s a similar reason why I have such mixed feelings about some build tools and co…

The output of gcc and clang probably don't look much like hand-written machine code either, though. Or, for that matter, the output of V8 and SpiderMonkey. You can't avoid the compilers :)

Of course! I’m not saying it’s rational. If I had experience hand-writing machine code maybe I would feel the same about that...

Re: Nobody's just reading your code

#25

Post by andrea_sdl »

nathanaldensr wrote: post #19
curtis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... willingness to fearlessly dig into someone else's code. I've done this many times. The problem is that it takes a lot of time, and there's no way you can dig through more than a fraction of a large codebase. You gotta pick your battles.

Pragmatism wins the day, for sure. I'll happily read someone else's code (e.g., an open-source GitHub repository I rely on) if it's necessary to troubleshoot issues or implement a feature. There needs to be a reason (i.e., motivation) to read code.

This is the only reason (at least for now) that makes me dig into a library code. And I always got some benefit from it.

I think we often treat libraries as voodoo blackboxes, but they're more often thatn not created by normal people with great skills. Sometimes it's a great way to learn a way to code, or even better, to understand the behaviour of a library.

I found myself doing it more often when the IDE itself downloaded and linked the sources. (Lazy, I know).

Re: Nobody's just reading your code

#26

Post by khedoros1 »

tobr wrote: post #24
icebraining wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The output of gcc and clang probably don't look much like hand-written machine code either, though. Or, for that matter, the output of V8 and SpiderMonkey. You can't avoid the compilers :)

Of course! I’m not saying it’s rational. If I had experience hand-writing machine code maybe I would feel the same about that...

I've done bits of assembly, but I've also studied compilers. They felt less magical to me when I learned some of how they work.

Then again, I'm primarily a C++ developer, so I'm used to the output of my build tools being non-trivial to understand.

Re: Nobody's just reading your code

#27

Post by W0lf »

I wouldn't have thought to be in the minority when stating that I actually read a lot of foreign code out of curiosity. Especially when dealing with architectural decisions, I like to dig into codebases I consider to be good and professional (a rarity in the professional/proprietary development world unfortunately). For instance, reading the chromium source code or mozilla for that matter, give you a lot of good input since both codebases are sufficiently complex and deal with a lot of layers and stacks.

Re: Nobody's just reading your code

#28

Post by copperx »

bsimpson wrote: post #14
jotto wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No mention of time in the article or in your comment. With infinite time we could fix a lot of things.

Of course you can expand this to be unreasonable - you could also make a strawman argument about how you need to understand all the compilers, OS APIs, and chip architectures that support your product. Obviously, that's not what I'm saying. I'm making a few assumptions: the code you're depending on was written by people like you (e.g. other open source volunteers with expertise in the same language as you); the limit…

> It's probably not as scary as you think it is; after all, it was written by other people like you.

Most interesting code has been written by people smarter than me (the kernel, compositing window manager, network stack, web rendering engine, virtual machine, etc.), and while reading that code probable isn't intractable, it would take me decades of effort to understand. At the same time, I think I can be an effective developer by building on top of those technologies (i.e., being a great plumber). And that's OK.

Re: Nobody's just reading your code

#29

Post by natecavanaugh »

bsimpson wrote: post #2

One of the things that sets a good programmer apart is the willingness to fearlessly dig into someone else's code. I've heard it said before that you're responsible for every line of code you ship to your users. It follows that you shouldn't treat your dependencies as black boxes. Getting a stack trace that's 3 or 4 levels deep in Django/React/ ? Dig under the covers and understand what's happening. Include that info…

I can only say Amen to this. If you ship it, you either accept responsibility as far as you can, or you're "that" person who redirects you another department because it's not technically their job.

Plus, as you mentioned the opportunity for learning is immense.

Re: Nobody's just reading your code

#30

Post by albertgoeswoof »

W0lf wrote: post #27

I wouldn't have thought to be in the minority when stating that I actually read a lot of foreign code out of curiosity. Especially when dealing with architectural decisions, I like to dig into codebases I consider to be good and professional (a rarity in the professional/proprietary development world unfortunately). For instance, reading the chromium source code or mozilla for that matter, give you a lot of good inpu…

How do you know a codebase is good before you invest time digging into it?
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