Using visualization tools to understand large polyglot code bases
Thoughtworks Technology Podcast
Thoughtworks
4.5 • 58 Ratings
🗓️ 3 September 2020
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Code visualization tools can be a great way to understand the intricacies of large code bases but they can be problematic when dealing with very old or very new code sets. Our co-hosts Rebecca Parsons and Ashok Subramanian are joined by Erik Dörnenburg and Korny Sietsma to look at the benefits and challenges of code visualization, especially when dealing with multiple programming languages.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everyone. |
| 0:12.0 | I'd like to welcome you to another edition of the ThoughtWorks Technology podcast. |
| 0:16.0 | My name is Rebecca Parsons. |
| 0:18.0 | I'm one of your recurring co-hosts and the chief technology officer for |
| 0:22.3 | ThoughtWorks. And we're here today to talk about code visualization tools, how this works across |
| 0:29.7 | different programming languages. I am joined by my colleague Ashok, who's another one of our co-host. |
| 0:36.2 | So let's start with Ashok, please. |
| 0:38.1 | Hello. Hello, everyone. Thanks, Rebecca. I'm Ashok's propion. I am the head of technology |
| 0:44.4 | for ThoughtWorks in the UK and one of the hosts of the ThoughtWorks Technology Podcasts. I think we've |
| 0:51.0 | got two experts on the topic with us today, Corny and Eric. |
| 0:56.0 | Corny, do you want to introduce yourself first, and then Eric can go next. |
| 1:00.0 | Hi, I'm Corny Seitzma. I'm a tech principal in ThoughtWorks in the UK, originally from the Australian office, but I've come over here a few years ago. |
| 1:08.0 | Yeah, I'm quite keen on tinkering with visualization, very much a visual thinker. So visualizing code has always been appealing to me. Hi, and my name is Eric Dawnberg. I'm the head of technology in Fort Worth, Germany. I have a really, I had a very strong interest in visualization when we're dealing with really large code bases over the last few years. I haven't spent that much time, |
| 1:28.0 | but I'm super curious about the topic. And when I heard that Corny is getting into this topic quite |
| 1:33.5 | deeply, I was very curious to have this discussion. Excellent. To maybe get ourselves started, |
| 1:39.7 | I thought maybe we can describe the whole subject you know, subject or area around visualizations. |
| 1:45.3 | And I know Eric, there's probably some articles that you've written, which almost like, |
| 1:50.9 | I think someone referred to in our internal main list as they're almost becoming like a teenager |
| 1:55.9 | around visualization. So I know you have been tinkling with this for a long time. |
| 2:02.4 | So could you describe your view on visualization? |
| 2:05.8 | Yeah, I think the article that was referred to was called Get the Thousand Foot View. |
| 2:11.1 | And I compared at the time as when we were flying all a little bit more, flying over a surface. |
... |
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