[HN Gopher] Show HN: Experimental Semantic Code Explorer
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       Show HN: Experimental Semantic Code Explorer
        
       Author : paulshen
       Score  : 31 points
       Date   : 2021-01-06 21:18 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (artifacts.bypaulshen.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (artifacts.bypaulshen.com)
        
       | Ristovski wrote:
       | Is only React supported? Or is the architecture generalized
       | enough where support for other languages can be implemented
       | further on?
        
         | paulshen wrote:
         | It's generic enough for JavaScript/TypeScript codebases. Under
         | the hood, it's using TypeScript's language server which
         | conveniently runs in the browser. Other languages would require
         | running the respective language service elsewhere or caching
         | the results (ala LSIF https://lsif.dev/)
        
       | lrossi wrote:
       | I think maybe Facebook should stop asking for complicated
       | algorithms questions in their interviews, and instead ask to
       | debug code like this with 7 indentation levels per function and
       | behavior affected by a dozen flags.
       | 
       | The tool is nice, but it would have been better if the code was
       | more readable in the first place, such that any editor would have
       | sufficed.
       | 
       | To be fair, I have seen much worse. At least there's plenty of
       | comments, and the naming is ok.
        
       | Kiro wrote:
       | Awesome! This should be made into a VSC extension.
        
       | paulshen wrote:
       | I've been thinking about how we can make devtools smarter and
       | more fun to use. We write code with text but programs contain a
       | lot of structure that we can take advantage of! If you're on
       | mobile, you can find a video here
       | https://twitter.com/_paulshen/status/1346583010691321856
       | 
       | This demo is an iteration of my code browser exploration where
       | jump to definition always opens in a column to the right. I use
       | TypeScript's language server to get the program's semantics which
       | allows features such as showing only the item (eg function) that
       | you're jumping to.
       | 
       | Here is another iteration with a canvas where you can drag panes
       | around. https://artifacts.bypaulshen.com/code-
       | explorer/01/?snapshot=... I have more ideas/iterations coming. My
       | goal is to productionize this for real use :)
        
         | n0w wrote:
         | This is pretty cool.
         | 
         | One thing I noticed is that Cmd-Clicking a variable only shows
         | where it was defined. I think it would be pretty useful if you
         | could also see the places it was changed.
        
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       (page generated 2021-01-06 23:00 UTC)