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Navigating a new code base

This is a series leading up to a Virtual Coffee Lunch & Learn titled Asking Coding Questions with Bekah, @bekahhw and me, Nick Taylor, happening May 27th.

How do you navigate a new code base?

This can vary depending on your experience level, but we'd love to hear from all of you.

Tell us all your tips and tricks!

Looking for some inspiration? Check out @adiatiayu’s post!

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Top comments (24)

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cerchie profile image
Lucia Cerchie

I use codesee.io/ to view the overall structure, as well as drawing some of it out to get it in my muscle memory.

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Nick Taylor

Noice!

Noice!

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icueto profile image
Alex Cueto

Does that support ruby?

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cerchie profile image
Lucia Cerchie

I don't think it does yet -- the website says Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, & TypeScript.

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canolcer profile image
Can Olcer

In addition to what others have said, go through the existing automated tests. If there's a good testing culture at the company, the tests should show you how the most important flows and functions work and what you can expect as input and output.

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Nick Taylor

Croc mascot nodding

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Jacob Landry

Another good thing to consider, see if you can get added to architectural or stakeholder meetings as an observer. Sometimes you can learn a TON about the platform just by seeing it in use or hearing the conversations people are having about it. Even simple things like seeing a single workflow can suddenly flip that switch for you.

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Nick Taylor

Yeah!

A T-Rex saying Yeah!

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MJCoder

For me it would have to be the following;

  • Walkthrough the codebase
  • Documentation - a must if you are bringing on people that will work on the codebase
  • Testing & debugging code
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bekahhw profile image
BekahHW

I’m a huge fan of testing and debugging to learn the codebase.

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Mohammad Javed

It also allows you to see how others code, you can pick up so much.

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Nick Taylor

BB-8 giving a thumbs up

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Nick Taylor

That's awesome! 🔥

Yes, that's awesome!

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Rohit Retnakaran

I usually prefer someone telling me the entry point for any code base and then take it from there

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Andrew Baisden

Get a developer who is familiar with it to onboard you. Then play around with it in a test environment and learn how everything works.

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Nick Taylor

Actor Zach Galifianakis giving a thumbs up in a convertible car

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Jeremy Friesen

I'm curious to see what other folks have to say.

I know I learned a bit when I posed this question awhile ago.

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Nick Taylor

Nice!

Nice

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arjunan profile image
sarjunan
  1. Documentation
  2. Unit tests
  3. Check-in history. We can get an idea which area we need to check for specific module etc
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Tao Wen

get it up and running, then use debugger to follow one task processing process

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Jason F

This is the way.

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Fra

I’m totally agree 👍🏻