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Jeff Darcy
Personal blog · obdurodon.silvrback.comprogrammingsystems
Jeff Darcy's personal blog at obdurodon.silvrback.com covers programming and systems. Since 2018, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 10 times, most often “Navigating a Large Codebase”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
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Most-linked posts?
- Navigating a Large Codebase3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2018-09-20
What Hacker News says?
I just happened to write a blog post about this a while ago: http://obdurodon.silvrback.com/navigating-a-large-codebase Short version: document everything as you learn, master your tools, look at message and data formats before code, follow some of the important code paths, change something and see how the system responds.
Comment linking /navigating-a-large-codebase
on “Ask HN: How to be productive with big existing code base”Submitted Why C Should Go Away as a story · 3 points
HN discussionThe language I want to write would have built-in support for the flow of control within a single function to flow seamlessly across multiple processes/machines. I don't mean fancy RPC. That still requires the programmer to break up the parts that run in different places into separate functions and callbacks, define the arguments that get passed between them, etc. I mean the compiler knows about the notion of a "plac…
Comment linking /distributed-functions
on “Languages I want to write”Submitted Navigating a Large Codebase as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMany times. Usually it wasn't a whole system but a component or library licensed from someone else, where "someone else" was unresponsive or out of business. In one case, the guy who'd written it used to go on month-long wilderness expeditions during which he was completely unreachable. The solution almost always involved a certain amount of reverse engineering, and damn sure I always tried to advocate getting away…
Comment linking /navigating-a-large-codebase
on “Ask HN: Have you ever inherited a codebase nobody on the team could understand?”Submitted Navigating a Large Codebase as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHere's part 1, with a link to part 2. https://obdurodon.silvrback.com/winter-running-part-1 Again, thanks for your help.
Comment linking /winter-running-part-1
on “Importance of muscle mass, strength and cardiorespiratory fitness for longevity”I don't claim it's better, but a couple of the points here echo those I made myself four years ago so people might find that post interesting as well. https://obdurodon.silvrback.com/navigating-a-large-codebase
Comment linking /navigating-a-large-codebase
on “Contributing to Complex Projects”> I should probably write a blog post about this or something. Please do. I did. Shameless self-plug: https://obdurodon.silvrback.com/error-handling Maybe you'll find something of interest there, even if it's something to disagree with. That's fine; contrast improves visibility. Having written that just before the current surge of interest in the subject, I'm finding many of the discussions quite fascinating.
Comment linking /error-handling
on “Mental models around Ok-Wrapping”As it happens, I wrote a blog post about this not too long ago. Basic summary: (1) Write things down as you go. (2) Learn your tools (e.g. IDE or cscope). (3) Learn the core data structures and RPC definitions first. (4) Trace through important code flows. (5) Experiment with small changes to see how they affect things. The full post is here: http://obdurodon.silvrback.com/navigating-a-large-codebase BTW, a lot of f…
Comment linking /navigating-a-large-codebase
on “Ask HN: What is the best practice for reading large pieces of C code?”