3 ms·
One of the tricks I like to use to get up to speed quickly is making a hyperlinked dictionary / glossary (a wiki or a github page with anchor links work nicely)
by spion 10y ago
One of the tricks I like to use to get up to speed quickly is making a hyperlinked dictionary / glossary (a wiki or a github page with anchor links work nicely). The biggest roadblock to understanding the code you read is not knowing the exact meaning of the terminology chosen by the original developers. Building the dictionary helps internalise it quickly, leading to much less confusion when reading.
Terms present in the UI (or API docs) of the segment you wish to understand are a good starting point.
- mysterydip 10y agoYou might be interested in this single page app I made to handle similar use cases of automatically hyperlinking documentation: https://github.com/elusivegames/termify https://github.com/elusivegames/termify Sorry there's no live demo, but the readme should explain it easily enough.
- techbio 10y agoThanks for the link. I enjoyed the breakdown, and can see how it works, but wow that code would be easier to read split up over three php files and a template.
- mysterydip 10y agoDefinitely. The goal was something I could just drop in as one file to a folder of docs, hence the ugliness :)
- morbidhawk 10y agoI do something similar when reading terminology used in code but for a different reason. I like to steal the good name ideas and I keep them in a mind map I can later look at for naming inspiration.