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Untapped Way to Learn a Codebase: Build a Visualizer
21–30 of 54 posts
Re: Untapped Way to Learn a Codebase: Build a Visualizer
#22A use case that interests me is dynamic visualization for debugging, when there are interacting systems.
Re: Untapped Way to Learn a Codebase: Build a Visualizer
#23GitHub Next comes to mind
Re: Untapped Way to Learn a Codebase: Build a Visualizer
#24I am quite skeptical and reserved when it comes to AI, particularly as it relates to impacts of the next generation of engineers. But using AI to learn a code base has been life-changing. Using a crutch to feel your way around. Then ditching the crutch when things are familiar, like using a map until you learn the road yourself.
Re: Untapped Way to Learn a Codebase: Build a Visualizer
#25[dead]
Re: Untapped Way to Learn a Codebase: Build a Visualizer
#26GitHub Next comes to mind https://githubnext.com/projects/repo-visualization/
Not very useful, is it?
Re: Untapped Way to Learn a Codebase: Build a Visualizer
#27A use case that interests me is dynamic visualization for debugging, when there are interacting systems.
To flesh this out, let me see the volume of calls and data from one place to another. Help diagnose back-pressure, drops, rejections, and any other irregularities.
Think of an on-caller who wants to quickly pinpoint a problem. Visualization could help one understand the nature of the problem before reading the code. Then you could select a part of the visualization and ask the computer to tell you what that part does, if there are any recent changes to it, etc.
Re: Untapped Way to Learn a Codebase: Build a Visualizer
#28This is the first thing that I used LLMs on. Not code generation, but parser and tooling to gain understanding. Also saves resources in the long run.
Re: Untapped Way to Learn a Codebase: Build a Visualizer
#29Your visualizer looks great! I really like that it queues up tasks to run instead of only operating on the code during runtime attachment. I haven't seen that kind of thing before.
I built my own node graph utility to do this for my code, after using Unreal's blueprints for the first time. Once it clicked for me that the two are different views of the same codebase, I was in love. It's so much easier for me to reason about node graphs, and so much easier for me to write code as plain text (with an IDE/language server). I share your wish that there were a more general utility for it, so I could use it for languages other than js/ts.
Anyway, great job on this!
Re: Untapped Way to Learn a Codebase: Build a Visualizer
#30This is the first thing that I used LLMs on. Not code generation, but parser and tooling to gain understanding. Also saves resources in the long run.
One of my favorite uses for Claude Code is to point it at a section of seriously badly written code with undecipherable symbol names, over the top cyclomatic complexity etc and just ask it to make the code readable.