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Software Evolution Storylines, Inspired By XKCD

Posted by timothy on from the top-that-with-sparklines dept.

jamie tips this mind-blowing data visualization concept from (naturally) data visualization researcher Michael Ogawa, who explains that it was inspired by "this XKCD comic. It represents characters as lines that converge in time as they share scenes. Could this technique be adapted for software developers who work on the same code?"

2 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. He may have been inspired by XKCD by argStyopa · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...but XKCD pretty clearly was inspired by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wallchart_of_World_History (first version 1890).

    It's a pretty cool visualization, illustrating in a very superficial way how each state mutates and evolves politically into its descendants.

    --
    -Styopa
  2. ls history by rolando2424 · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to this there are 5 files that start with "ls".

    Except for ls.c, all those files have only one entry on their history. The "initial revision" on 1993-06-16.

    On the other hand, you can check the history of ls by yourself. Ignoring a "build" commit done on 2010-09-18 (and by the same guy who did the "initial revision" ones), the last commit is from 2010-07-01 with the message header of "ls: use the POSIX date style when the locale does not specify one".

    While not extremely important, it does show that ls keeps receiving updates to this day.

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    Okay seriously I've just run out of pointless things to say.