jmsfltchruk (u/jmsfltchruk)

jmsfltchruk commented on Writing code is easy, reading it isn't idiallo.com/blog/writing-... · Posted by u/jnord

jmsfltchruk · 3 months ago

Struggling with making an algorithm in a big architecture once I felt the same way - just couldn't keep the current state of the code in my head and also imagine the new solution at the same time. Ever since, have been working on http://etchpad.dev to solve this pain (shameless plug). We're trying to make an interface that works with an engineering brain, so we can think in terms of blueprints and wiring, idk just something more tangible than hallucinating wildly in a multidimensional space like we have to right now.

Really agree with the article, ultimately the typing and thinking speed issues can be solved with AI, but trusting it and auditing what it does seems like a job for humans for the foreseeable, you know, so maybe we avert a classic sci-fi AI apocalypse and whatnot

jmsfltchruk commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025) · Posted by u/david927

jtwaleson · 10 months ago

Treemaps are the default, and are great for finding outliers with heatmaps, but terrible in terms of explainability. So now I'm heading into architecture diagram territory, and tree-sitter is helping with extracting the names of classes, functions, variables etc. LLMs can make decent diagrams out of this.

jmsfltchruk · 9 months ago

Very cool! I see how you can do zoom-to-code on a treemap, but the diagrams then need to be more abstract and without code, right?

jmsfltchruk commented on Ask HN: What are you working on? (February 2025) · Posted by u/david927

jtwaleson · 10 months ago

I'm creating an infinite canvas that has all your organization's code and documentation on it. If you zoom in, you can see the code, if you zoom out you see the big picture. By giving everything a place on the map, it becomes easier to figure out your way through the landscape and understand the systems. Different modes can you show you different things: code age, authorship (bus-factor, is the person still with the company etc), languages used, security issues. There's time-travel, think Gource for all software in your company, and maybe the most fun: a GeoGuessr for code. Select the repos for your team (or if you feel confident, of the entire org), you get a snippet and have to guess where it is. The plan is for LLMs + tree-sitter to analyze all the code and show relations to other systems, databases etc.

I had the idea 2 years ago, but starting building in earnest 2 months ago. Spending all my time on it now, minus 3 or 4 days per week of earning money. Currently looking for a GTM/sales-oriented cofounder in NL.

jmsfltchruk · 10 months ago

Intriguing - what’s the default visualisation? You mentioned treemaps, so a treemap of each directory with the files inside that you can zoom into to see the code? How is tree-sitter helping you here?