Comments on: Developing CodeBurner — An Exercise in Exploratory Programming http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/01/28/developing-codeburner-%e2%80%94-an-exercise-in-exploratory-programming/ News, opinion, and fresh thinking for web developers and designers. The official podcast of sitepoint.com. Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:44:46 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Tarh http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/01/28/developing-codeburner-%e2%80%94-an-exercise-in-exploratory-programming/comment-page-1/#comment-873011 Tarh Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:46:55 +0000 http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/?p=4462#comment-873011 I do this kind of exploratory programming almost daily, as I work with a nearly completely undocumented C++ codebase with 100,000+ lines of procedural code. Also, due to the nature of the project, it's not possible to run it in debugging mode.   Luckily, the Visual Studio IDE has plenty of tools to help make this process easy. I've become a huge fan of the "Callers Graph" function, which basically shows a tree of all calls to a particular method and lets you quickly jump around. The "Find All References" function points out every single spot in the code which refers to a method, class, or variable. And finally, for all those sticky bits, the good old "Find and Replace" function can be used to find things that the interpreter can't quite figure out.   The process is completely backward. If you're looking for code that does something, but you have no idea where it is, you start by thinking "what code would this method need to use in order to do what it does?" You can then find that child code more easily, and work your way back through the calls to find where everything originated. At this point you can use a debugger to scan the scope for the information that you need or, if you're like me and don't have access to a debugger for this project, you can resort to a few good ol' "echo" statements! :-P   It's not easy, but assuming that you know the language and IDE that you're working with quite well, it's not that difficult, either. I do this kind of exploratory programming almost daily, as I work with a nearly completely undocumented C++ codebase with 100,000+ lines of procedural code. Also, due to the nature of the project, it’s not possible to run it in debugging mode.
 
Luckily, the Visual Studio IDE has plenty of tools to help make this process easy. I’ve become a huge fan of the “Callers Graph” function, which basically shows a tree of all calls to a particular method and lets you quickly jump around. The “Find All References” function points out every single spot in the code which refers to a method, class, or variable. And finally, for all those sticky bits, the good old “Find and Replace” function can be used to find things that the interpreter can’t quite figure out.
 
The process is completely backward. If you’re looking for code that does something, but you have no idea where it is, you start by thinking “what code would this method need to use in order to do what it does?” You can then find that child code more easily, and work your way back through the calls to find where everything originated. At this point you can use a debugger to scan the scope for the information that you need or, if you’re like me and don’t have access to a debugger for this project, you can resort to a few good ol’ “echo” statements! :-P
 
It’s not easy, but assuming that you know the language and IDE that you’re working with quite well, it’s not that difficult, either.

]]> By: Hawk http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/01/28/developing-codeburner-%e2%80%94-an-exercise-in-exploratory-programming/comment-page-1/#comment-869974 Hawk Thu, 29 Jan 2009 02:45:28 +0000 http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/?p=4462#comment-869974 Great tool! Thank you! The only thing I would ask is to include other browsers like IE6 and FF2. But mostly IE6 because like it or not we still have to make our sites work with that browser. Great tool! Thank you!

The only thing I would ask is to include other browsers like IE6 and FF2. But mostly IE6 because like it or not we still have to make our sites work with that browser.

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