Project: Code Visualizer
What I learned: Programming Structure and Coding Tools
Duration: 2 months
Age: 21
During my work at TMEIC I was challenged by large size of coding scripts. The learning curve was very steep due to their own proprietary coding language, as well as the complexity of the systems ( Typically over 50,000 lines of code ). Therefore in an attempt to better grasp the inner workings of the system I built a code visualizer for their custom coding language. My first attempt was a network graph,
Although the network graph was very artistically inspired it failed to communicate how the system operated due to the complexity. I then created a custom GUI interface that shows the code as well as the “inputs” and “outputs” . This created an intuitive understanding of how the code flowed throughout the system so I called the GUI- “Code Flow”. Although this GUI was great for understanding the code, It did not provide a method to formally document the code for clients. Therefore I revisited the more graphic approach. I attempted to make a flow diagram of the system.
This was promising, but too cluttered to view the entire system in one diagram. Therefore I split the diagram according to sub-processes and created a flow diagram for each one. This was visual pleasing, easy to understand, and able to be formally documented for clients.
Some of the technical aspects of this project included:
- search recursion (for parsing 50k lines)
- Complex Python Object relationships
- Dot frame work ( flow diagram )
- Visnet framework in R ( for Network Graph )
- Tkinter library ( for GUI interface ).
Future Improvements:
- Better parsing of scripts to understand datatypes
- SQL implementation ( alot of the system is written in SQL scripts which is not currently displayed)