this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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When you look at some random project's source code for the first time how do you assess time, quality, and complexity at first glance? (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/programming
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I'm just generalizing, like if you want to copy some cleaver feature or modify some Python program you came across, what are the red or green flags indicating how well your (or particularly some hobbyist's/your early learning self's) results are likely to turn out?

Also how can you tell when reading into such a project is going to be a major project that is beyond the scope of you ultimate goals. For instance, I wanted to modify Merlin 3d printer firmware for hardware that was not already present in the project, but as an Arduino copy pasta hobbyist, despite my best efforts, that was simply too much for me to tackle at the time because of the complexity of the code base and my limited skills.

How do you learn to spot these situations before diving down the rabbit hole? Or, to put it another way, what advice would you give yourself at this stage of the learning curve?

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[–] RonSijm 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (3 children)

Generally mostly by cyclomatic complexity:

  • How big are the methods overall

  • Do methods have a somewhat single responsibility

  • How is the structure, is everything inner-connected and calling each other, or are there some levels of orchestration?

  • Do they have any basic unittests, so that if I want to add anything, I can copypaste some test with an entrypoint close to my modifation to see how things are going

  • Bonus: they actually have linter configuration in their project, and consistent commonly used style guidelines

If the code-structure itself is good, but the formatting is bad, I can generally just run the code though a linter that fixes all the formatting. That makes it easier to use, but probably not something I'd actually contribute PRs to

How do you learn to spot these situations before diving down the rabbit hole? Or, to put it another way, what advice would you give yourself at this stage of the learning curve?

Probably some kind of metric of "If I open this code in an IDE, and add my modification, how long will it take before I can find a suitable entrypoint, and how long before I can test my changes" - if it's like half a day of debugging and diagnostics before I even can get started trying to change anything, it's seems a bit tedious

Edit: Though also, how much time is this going to save you if you do implement it? If it saves you weeks of work once you have this feature, but it takes a couple of days, I suppose it's worth going though some tedious stuff.

But then again: I'd also check: are there other similar libraries with "higher scoring" "changeability metrics"

So in your specific case:

I wanted to modify Merlin 3d printer firmware

Is there any test with a mocked 3d printer to test this, or is this a case of compiling a custom framework, installing it on your actual printer, potentially bricking it if the framework is broken - etc etc

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Do they have any basic unittests, so that if I want to add anything, I can copypaste some test with an entrypoint close to my modifation to see how things are going

Do you mean their code is already setup with some kind of output to terminal that you can use to add a unit test into as well?

I don't even recall what I was messing with awhile back, I think it was Python, but adding a simple print test didn't work. I have no idea how they were redirecting print(), but that was a wall I didn't get past at the time.

Bonus: they actually have linter configuration in their project, and consistent commonly used style guidelines

That stuff seems like a language on top of a language for me, and when it errors I get really lost. I usually have trouble with the whole IDE thing in the first place because I hate the path of least resistance exploitation thing. I keep trying to figure out the alternatives and often get lost in their complexities. I've tried most of them, but when I see the networking logs for most options people gravitate towards, I am appalled. I think I'm about to try a Neo Vim variant with a offline AI code completion option soon.

how much time is this going to save you if you do implement it? If it saves you weeks of work once you have this feature, but it takes a couple of days, I suppose it’s worth going though some tedious stuff.

I wouldn't call anything I do "for work". I get sick of something that annoys me and want to go in and fix the issue despite being completely unqualified, but naive enough to try. I don't even know how to really research what alternate libraries might exist. I pretty much go hunting for examples and copy whatever they use. API documentation is often a hurtle for me because the typical short hand syntax makes a ton of assumptions about preexisting knowledge.

With stuff like Marlin, I seem to like the hardware side of things. I think I was looking to add a LCD display that was not a configuration option in Marlin and was trying to determine how to add a driver for it. That was simply far too ambitious for me a few years ago and still is.

[–] RonSijm 1 points 9 months ago

Do you mean their code is already setup with some kind of output to terminal that you can use to add a unit test into as well?

I don’t even recall what I was messing with awhile back, I think it was Python, but adding a simple print test didn’t work. I have no idea how they were redirecting print(), but that was a wall I didn’t get past at the time.

Yea, probably not every language has a concept of unittests, but basically test code.

Like if you have a calculator, there would be a test (outside of the real project) of like
If Calculator.Calculate(2 + 2) then assert outcome = 4

That way - if lets say the calculator only does + operations - you could still copy that test line, and create a new test of
If Calculator.Calculate(5 * 5) then assert outcome = 25

Your test will fail initially, but you can just run through it in a debugger, step into the code, figure out where it's most appropriate to add a * operator function, and then implement it, and see your test success.

Other benefit of that is that if you submit your change as PR, with the test the repo maintainer doesn't have to determine whether your code actually works just by looks, or actually running the calculator, your test proves you've added something useful that works (and you didn't break the existing tests)

That stuff seems like a language on top of a language for me, and when it errors I get really lost.

If you're just programming for yourself without the intent to submit it for a PR, you can just throw away the linter file. But I mentioned it was good to have in a project, because if there were multiple people working on it, all with their own style, the code can become a mess quite fast

I get sick of something that annoys me and want to go in and fix the issue despite being completely unqualified, but naive enough to try.

Well, I mean, that's basically all the things right? You start completely unqualified, mess around for a while, and after a while you're them more-qualified next time...

With stuff like Marlin, I seem to like the hardware side of things.

Just messing around with stuff you like is a good way to learn - though in my experience doing anything with hardware is way more difficult than just plain software. If you have to interface with hardware its very often pretty obscure stuff, like sending the correct hardware instructions to a driver, or to just "hardware pins" even... Like trying to start modifying a driver as a kind of starter project doesn't sound like something I'd recommend

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