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Source Code Browsers?

Posted by Cliff on from the how-to-achieve-code-nirvana dept.

patonw asks: "I just started working for a company as a programmer on a project with a huge existing codebase. The person hiring me half-jokingly said that it usually takes new employees two years before they understand the system. What I am looking for is not just an editor/browser but a program that displays functions and classes as connected graphs -- preferably free. I would like to view how programs are structured by function calls and class relations. I have access to several different kinds of platforms/operating systems."

5 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Meh by cookiepus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If your codebase is anything like what I've been working with, there's no tools that are going to make your life easier.

    If the code had decent structure, you'd not be asking this question. But it's a mess. And if you display the mess as a tree structure, it's still a mess. The value is limited.

    The best thing I've done is set up etags accross the entire codebase. This way I can at least navigate code easier. But I doubt you will understand anything more from tree graphs.

    --
    Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
  2. Debug by rmull · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is perhaps a tangential answer, but I do much better by going through the code with a debugger and watching things happen. Especially with some of the more compilacated OO stuff, and when the comments are unhelpful or wrong, it can be much more useful than reading the code.

    --
    See you, space cowboy...
    1. Re:Debug by GlassHeart · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I do much better by going through the code with a debugger and watching things happen.

      That can tell you what is actually happening, but not what the original programmer wanted to happen, or why he needs it to happen.

      when the comments are unhelpful or wrong, it can be much more useful than reading the code.

      Not to be facetious, but how do you know it's the comments, not the code, that are wrong?

  3. It takes a *long* time to learn large systems. by Richard+Steiner · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I worked on the flight operations system for a large airline for over eight years (actually ten if you count my contractor time), and I only learned the intimate details of perhaps 20% of it bu the time I'd left.

    Complex applications require a huge amount of specialized knowledge in order to understand, and most of that knowledge relates to the application or work process itself, not the technical environment...

    --
    Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
    The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
  4. Re:Roll-your-own by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Bryce Jacobs, be quiet. I crapped out more code this morning than a broken-down obsolete relic of DOS 3.3 like you could ever comprehend in a lifetime. Blah blah blah table blah blah blah SQL blah FoxPro blah database. Prove us wrong -- put your alleged code analyzer tools on Sourceforge if they are so great, or even exist. Until then, stop trying to tell software developers how to do their jobs.