Ask HN: Practical aspects of code-reading for study?
I am a noob, and I have read plenty of advice on reading code - read good code and let it sink in like listening to an orchestral recording, read code with bad style and refactor it mentally, print code and annotate it, etc.
I know there is tons of code to read, and absent of further guidance I should just dive in and get started. But in the interest of learning:
How do you find "good" code to read? How interactive should the reading be? Are there ways to find a progression of stuff to read - simple to complex? Know of any "reading lists" to follow, maybe even a code-reading curricular plan?
Thanks in advance.
1 comments
In the interactive part it helped me to use debuggers.
It's a bit harder with callback heavy languages, but it helped me big times when I started developing.
With a good IDE and a debugger, you can read while you step through and actually see whats happening.
Also it helped to ask the devs of the code on their architectural design decisions. Especially in the Java sphere where many design patterns get used and you find yourself often "Why didn't she code this more straight forward?!"
It's a bit harder with callback heavy languages, but it helped me big times when I started developing.
With a good IDE and a debugger, you can read while you step through and actually see whats happening.
Also it helped to ask the devs of the code on their architectural design decisions. Especially in the Java sphere where many design patterns get used and you find yourself often "Why didn't she code this more straight forward?!"