No, You are not Dumb. Programmers do spend a lot of time Understanding Code… • Hacker News Board

Re: No, You are not Dumb. Programmers do spend a lot of time Understanding Code…

#21

Post by vineet » Wed, May 12, 2010, 10:44 PM UTC

mikeleeorg wrote: post #18

abhirakshit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree to your point that that we need to write more understandable code(whatever the influences may be). By tools I meant some application which would help me understand already available code (well written or otherwise). Something which would quickly let me jump into the code and start working even when I do not have any background information about the code base.

Does something like JavaDoc, PHPDoc, JSDoc help? That would be an awesome tool though. Sounds like a great startup idea if someone can figure out how to build something like that :-)

Yes, a great startup idea. What do you think of our product, i.e the video on our blog (the Architexa blog)?

Re: No, You are not Dumb. Programmers do spend a lot of time Understanding Code…

#22

Post by mistermann » Wed, May 12, 2010, 11:20 PM UTC

vineet wrote: post #21

mikeleeorg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does something like JavaDoc, PHPDoc, JSDoc help? That would be an awesome tool though. Sounds like a great startup idea if someone can figure out how to build something like that :-)

Yes, a great startup idea. What do you think of our product, i.e the video on our blog (the Architexa blog)?

Looks interesting, I like how you can drill down into a sequence diagram, something I have tried to find in a tool in the past.

What languages/platforms does it support? .Net?

Re: No, You are not Dumb. Programmers do spend a lot of time Understanding Code…

#23

Post by vineet » Wed, May 12, 2010, 11:41 PM UTC

vineet wrote: post #21

mikeleeorg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does something like JavaDoc, PHPDoc, JSDoc help? That would be an awesome tool though. Sounds like a great startup idea if someone can figure out how to build something like that :-)

Yes, a great startup idea. What do you think of our product, i.e the video on our blog (the Architexa blog)?

Currently we are starting with Java, but do intend to get to other languages. Feel free to vote for your language on the blog or on the HN post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338310

Re: No, You are not Dumb. Programmers do spend a lot of time Understanding Code…

#24

Post by jared314 » Wed, May 12, 2010, 11:46 PM UTC

vineet wrote: post #21

mikeleeorg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does something like JavaDoc, PHPDoc, JSDoc help? That would be an awesome tool though. Sounds like a great startup idea if someone can figure out how to build something like that :-)

Yes, a great startup idea. What do you think of our product, i.e the video on our blog (the Architexa blog)?

Nice. Reminds me of some of the plugins for .Net Reflector, except more interactive.

Re: No, You are not Dumb. Programmers do spend a lot of time Understanding Code…

#25

Post by abhirakshit » Thu, May 13, 2010, 12:57 AM UTC

rlpb wrote: post #16

mikeleeorg wrote: post #2

Making your code open source is also a great way to make sure your code is easy to understand.

Some open source code is shockingly bad and difficult to understand. Some is rather good and a joy to work in (eg: Samba). I'm not sure the open source -ness makes a difference. Perhaps it is just that the successful open source projects that you've heard about or seen have easy to understand code, and that is the reason for their success (sampling bias)?

Although there are open source projects which are quite bad, I still think being open source does motivate one to write better code. Regardless, having tools at your disposal to quickly understand/ document code for yourself and maybe relay your ideas to others can be really helpful.

Re: No, You are not Dumb. Programmers do spend a lot of time Understanding Code…

#26

Post by mikeleeorg » Thu, May 13, 2010, 2:56 AM UTC

rlpb wrote: post #16

mikeleeorg wrote: post #2

Making your code open source is also a great way to make sure your code is easy to understand.

Some open source code is shockingly bad and difficult to understand. Some is rather good and a joy to work in (eg: Samba). I'm not sure the open source -ness makes a difference. Perhaps it is just that the successful open source projects that you've heard about or seen have easy to understand code, and that is the reason for their success (sampling bias)?

That's a good point. Bad code can definitely appear anywhere. I like to think that open source motivates good practices, like abhirakshit said, but I have no statistics to back up that belief.

This would be a very interesting research topic though. If I had more time, I'd attempt it. Anyone else know of such research, or want to try it? ;-)

Re: No, You are not Dumb. Programmers do spend a lot of time Understanding Code…

#27

Post by mikeleeorg » Thu, May 13, 2010, 3:15 AM UTC

vineet wrote: post #21

mikeleeorg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does something like JavaDoc, PHPDoc, JSDoc help? That would be an awesome tool though. Sounds like a great startup idea if someone can figure out how to build something like that :-)

Yes, a great startup idea. What do you think of our product, i.e the video on our blog (the Architexa blog)?

It's a very interesting take on UML tooling. Your product has a lot of potential. I'm curious to play around with it once it's released.

Re: No, You are not Dumb. Programmers do spend a lot of time Understanding Code…

#28

Post by abhirakshit » Thu, May 13, 2010, 2:48 PM UTC

mikeleeorg wrote: post #27

vineet wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a great startup idea. What do you think of our product, i.e the video on our blog (the Architexa blog)?

It's a very interesting take on UML tooling. Your product has a lot of potential. I'm curious to play around with it once it's released.

We are letting people in slowly for the trial version of our tool to provide good support. I would suggest you to sign up here (http://www.architexa.com/) and we will get back to you. Thanks for showing interest in our product.