Ask HN: Interesting resources about exploring codebases?

6 points by strontian 2 years ago | 3 comments

I explored a few codebases recently of public projects(tree-sitter, serenade, typescript). Does anyone know whether there is any high quality content out there related to exploring and understanding codebases?

frfl 2 years ago |

What I have noted

- Ask HN: How do you learn new libraries without much documentation? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23800590

- Also see this comment on the previous post - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23800729

- On navigating a large codebase - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26129190

strontian 2 years ago | |

Thank you!

debo_ 2 years ago |

Two things that helped me early in my career:

- Going to open-source libraries I was relatively familiar with, looking at commit #1, and then moving forward in time. (This works best when the project started on GitHub, rather than the first commit being a giant single-commit import of a released version.)

- Strangely, "Working Effectively With Legacy Code" gave me some generally useful tips on actively probing large codebases (instead of just trying to learn them by reading.)