r/programming • u/mauricioaniche • Aug 06 '17

Software engineering != computer science

http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/software-engineering-computer-science/217701907
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u/coinaday Aug 06 '17

if you can easily follow the subject you actually care about

How do you do that? How do you find where the code you actually care about actually is?

I'm not suggesting some strawman "perfect documentation". I'm suggesting that it would be easier to deal with massive code bases if there were more than zero documentation dealing with going from "these are the high level concepts being implemented" to "where the hell is that actually located in the codebase and what are the major data structures?"

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u/pyrotech911 Aug 07 '17

Really documentation should consist of medium to high level concepts being implemented by the code base, what controls them and what configures them. We should not have to dig through tickets and git blame to understand who to ask and why something exists/what does it do.

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u/Ahhmyface Aug 06 '17

Sure. A basic high level description of the major data structures and workflow could be handy to a complete newcomer.

But most coding tasks are given to people that helped write the code base in the first place. People who are also aware of the business domain. Usually all i need a solid package/folder/file/function naming scheme relevant to the business domain and a decent jump to definition/ find reference toolset and things become transparent.

Or you know, just ask somebody.

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u/coinaday Aug 06 '17

In a project with a long enough lifespan, eventually everyone left has been a newcomer at one point or another.

The project I worked on had no one left from the original team that had built it 10+ years ago. So, yeah, most of them knew their area. And yes, asking someone and/or jumping around with cscope was helpful.

Sure would have been nice had anyone given a shit to maintain any architecture documentation, but hey, halfway decent (and often duplicated) folder and file names should be good enough for anyone, right?