10 Techniques That Will Make You Understand Other People’s Code Better
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Reading code is an integral part of software development. Here is an in-depth breakdown by our developer Patricia Aas of some techniques to use to read code.
Click here to see the full blog post
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@gwen-dragon: Is there a vod of the talk somewhere?
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@mtaki14: Hi:-) Here is the video. https://youtu.be/NLmRl1cflhA
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@varsha: Thank you!
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Nice article. I've found some things that I already do, and some others I should try to adapt.
As a mostly copy-paste-modify coder (yeah, I know. Not the pure art form, but botching is an art form too) I can fully confirm that reading code can be quite hard sometimes, but must be done, because you need to know what you are pasting and how it works before you paste it if you don't want to run into nasty surprises later.
I (ab-)use other people for rubber ducking too, it helps a lot even if they have no clue WTH I am doing (of course only if they want to listen and not too often). Interestingly even people without any clue about programming are often of valuable help because they sometimes provide great insights, be it by little remarks which at a first glace seem to be totally unrelated, or just a rised eyebrow, or a slight change in body position. This is often of great help when it comes to breaking out of established thought patterns that block further understanding of the code in front of me.
... and documentation: Have you ever tried to read your own code some years later?
I am doing it right now and I'd like to slap that guy who wrote the code - what a weird structure! -
That was an interesting read. Sounds tedious, I will likely remain ignorant and just tell myself the code is messy and the developer tried to obfuscate their actions by using timeless variables such as "a" and "b". Thanks nevertheless
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