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Re: First Major Software Development Project

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On 22/10/16 08:52, Taylor Street wrote:
> So, I am a new electrical engineer, but I just got put on a software
> development project.  It is a development board with a bunch of sensor
> attachments.  The code for the board has mostly been written and a lot
> of the driver libraries for the sensor attachments have been written.  I
> have to write a few more libraries for some new sensors.
> 
> I don't have a problem with C++.  I am very familiar with it.  However,
> I have never been taken on a massive development project before.  What's
> more is that the other programmer doesn't document his
> code...whatsoever.  The development software has automatic documentation
> through a markdown language, but he doesn't use it.  Nor does he even
> comment his code, other than the occasional line that was
> self-explanatory (e.g. "// end of for loop").
> 
> My first question is, do you have any tip for someone who is on their
> first software development project?  Secondly, how should I go about
> figuring out this code?  Should I write documentation for it?  Should I
> try to construct UML diagrams?  Flowcharts?  Stick figures?
> Role-playing?  ESP?
> 
> Any help or thoughts would be appreciated...even unhelpful, sarcastic,
> funny ones.

If you are trying to understand existing code, I find doxygen quite a
useful tool - even if there are no doxygen comments in the code.  Just
get doxygen to "document" /everything/.  Then you get a browser
interface which is searchable, with clickable cross-references for all
your identifiers, call graphs (caller and callee), include graphs, etc.
 It can make it easier when you are trying to find out what on earth the
function "foo" does - you can easily find out what code calls it, or
where it is called from.

You can also easily find the problem parts - variables that are accessed
from lots of different modules, call graphs with complicated recursion
loops, etc.

It does not solve everything, but I find it a handy tool.

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First Major Software Development Project Taylor Street <taylorkstreet@outlook.com> - 2016-10-21 23:52 -0700
  Re: First Major Software Development Project Julio Di Egidio <julio@diegidio.name> - 2016-10-22 06:22 -0700
  Re: First Major Software Development Project "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-10-22 15:57 -0400
  Re: First Major Software Development Project David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2016-10-24 16:25 +0200

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