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Re:Show HN: An experimental data-flow analysis tool for Java... by acconrad on Friday January 04, 2019 @01:11PM (#18826224)
This is very cool! What do you believe to be the prime use cases for this kind of tool?
Re:Show HN: An experimental data-flow analysis tool for Java... by mostlystatic on Friday January 04, 2019 @01:25PM (#18826371)
I'm still trying to figure that out :)

Here are some ideas:

• Debugging: figuring out why a variable or object property has an unexpected value

• Finding relevant code, possibly during onboarding of new devs

• Security: see where insecure values end up at runtime

• Telling BE devs what endpoint is used for a specific part of the UI

The architecture could also enable a few other features, like pausing when a particular value is encountered anywhere in the code.

Re:Show HN: An experimental data-flow analysis tool for Java... by hn_throwaway_99 on Friday January 04, 2019 @01:32PM (#18826449)
Finding relevant code, possibly during onboarding of new devs

That one is huge for me. So often coming into a new codebase (especially in the case where some of the libraries or underlying frameworks are new to me) I just want to know "How the F was that value populated??"

Kudos, would be super useful in my opinion.

Re:Show HN: An experimental data-flow analysis tool for Java... by Klathmon on Friday January 04, 2019 @07:30PM (#18829046)
I can already imagine the dev tool improvements that could come from something like this.

Being able to highlight a part of the dom and click through the stack of where it came from would be awesome! And it would work with just about any framework out there!

Re:Show HN: An experimental data-flow analysis tool for Java... by btown on Friday January 04, 2019 @02:54PM (#18827113)
> new devs

By the time you're no longer a "new dev," you're a "new dev" to the code you wrote when you started the job :) so it's a pretty universal need!