Re:Ask HN: How do you familiarize yourself with a new codebase?
by neverminder on Friday June 26, 2015 @12:29PM
(#9785778)
Not necessarily. For instance, my colleagues work with a fairly large codebase in java which runs on top of a framework written in scala. When they tried to hook up a debugger it drilled the whole stack top to the bottom, naturally and showed them whole lot of scala code. Problem is, these guys don't now scala, only java.
Re:Ask HN: How do you familiarize yourself with a new codebase?
by collyw on Sunday June 28, 2015 @05:19PM
(#9795145)
My debugger shows a full stacktrace too. I usually ignore the Django code that's its written on top of and use it in the sections I have written.
I don't find it a hindrance in any way seeing what part of the Django code called my code.
That's the theme I hear when prodding people who (sometimes loudly) say they don't use debuggers. They work on codebases that are either small, solo projects, or change very slowly. That way they can keep an accurate simulation of the entire program in their heads.
Meanwhile, I've always worked on codebases that were changing faster than I can keep up. The majority of my debugger time has been in code I've never seen before.