How do you maintain code quality / complexity?
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As I am starting my new job at EA, working on the Frostbite Editor, which is easily a 1000 man years job if I were to hazard guess... The codebase is very large! And the parts I am working on are very messy... Trying to study one little bit of functionality... the code ping pong between many different classes which all work on the same data at the same time, it's very challenging to grasping it all. One might call it some sort of spaghetti code. Now.. it might seems inevitable on large project with large team... But, at the risk of being blind folded by fanboyism, I think Microsoft.NET API code looks quite neat and simple. And this is a large project API too, 20 years in the making! By a large corporation! So.. how did they do it? How does one push back against the growing complexity?
A new .NET Serializer All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar Taking over the world since 1371!
Super Lloyd wrote:
Now.. it might seems inevitable on large project with large team... But, at the risk of being blind folded by fanboyism, I think Microsoft.NET API code looks quite neat and simple. And this is a large project API too, 20 years in the making! By a large corporation!
First thing that came to mind is "[EA Game Name] [Year++]". That's how it works, right? They keep going back to the same codebase, someone adds something to make it bigger/uglier, and they release a new version in the established franchise...
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Super Lloyd wrote:
the parts I am working on are very messy...
Free tip : If I were you, I'd be very careful with such statements on the internet about your current job, especially since you mentioned your employer's name and even the projects you are working on. Be unspecific, Loungers know where you work :-)
Excellent point. But in reality, I don't think details (like the actual company name) have to be known. If something's been evolving for 20 years and being worked on by a large team...yeah, us developers will all automatically assume it's grown to become downright nasty.
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Working on several generations of the same project for 25 years almost I see that there is no straightforward solution for this. Setting up code standard does not help, code review does not help... There is no way to 'clean' an old and complex code but to rewrite it from ground up - it will probably cost more in time than the original investment combined over years and will left you with a buggy code to test from zero...
"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012
Yes.. I suspect it is unavoidable...
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Super Lloyd wrote:
How does one push back against the growing complexity?
If I may venture an opinion: sometimes you don’t. Sometimes that complexity reflects what I call “battle-scarred code”. Old code that has seen many battles is rarely clean but it contains that protection against a divide by 0, and can handle that weird situation we encountered 5 years ago and so on. Really great companies, like Microsoft, might also have someone like Raymond Chen to maintain some kind of oral history project but in most places you just have to find yourself all the good stories hidden inside the code. And the bad ones too. Anyway, I learned to respect the battle-scarred code.
Mircea
Mircea Neacsu wrote:
someone like Raymond Chen
I remember some Microsoft blog video some years ago, and cant remember if was talking to him, that essential majority of the .net documentation (at least 2005 - 2015 maybe) was passed through this one person, hence provided great consistency across the documentation. As to Frostbite, I wonder how much gaming industry project to project rehire cycle has an impact, and the get it out the door. If you have somthing like World of Warcraft, where new players coming in over the years, then fixing "old" parts are relevant to user support. Also go read [Object-oriented programming is dead. Wait, really?](https://thenextweb.com/news/object-oriented-programming-is-dead-syndication) posted in articles the other day, might be relevant to how people thought they needed to program the system over the years vs reality of programming it.
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Regular review, and long design cycles. Lots of dogfooding by other developers. All of which is expensive. Also, actually having a documentation and technical writing team working *with* the development team helps both parties make better stuff. And then in terms of implementation I think they had an eye toward creating a "reference implementation" from the jump so there was some feeling that your code was going to be looked over by the public to keep people honest. This is all just feels and vibes I got working from working on .NET and Visual Studio teams at Microsoft at points, nothing concrete. But I will say this: Microsoft threw a ton of money at implementing the .NET BCL precisely because it was public facing. I don't know how public facing and broadly distributed the Frostbite editor source code is, but I do know EA is a big company and *can* produce clean code if they want to. It just costs more in terms of time (and thus money) - and trust me when I say that it's a hassle to have to code to standards that such necessarily requires - as well it should be since it's almost always harder to do the Right Thing(TM)
Real programmers use butterflies
honey the codewitch wrote:
But I will say this: Microsoft threw a ton of money at implementing the .NET BCL precisely because it was public facing.
This is the key point. Friends who worked in the gaming industry mostly burned out due to the insane time-to-market "schedules". The entire point was to get the programs working so they could be published, and it didn't matter how programs worked as long as they worked. Once a version was published, and sometimes before a version was published, it was on to the next version. There was no time to fix the errors of rushed coding unless something conflicted with something else in the next version. Sure, this happens in other industries, but gaming is IMO the poster child for propagating and maintaining bad code.
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honey the codewitch wrote:
But I will say this: Microsoft threw a ton of money at implementing the .NET BCL precisely because it was public facing.
This is the key point. Friends who worked in the gaming industry mostly burned out due to the insane time-to-market "schedules". The entire point was to get the programs working so they could be published, and it didn't matter how programs worked as long as they worked. Once a version was published, and sometimes before a version was published, it was on to the next version. There was no time to fix the errors of rushed coding unless something conflicted with something else in the next version. Sure, this happens in other industries, but gaming is IMO the poster child for propagating and maintaining bad code.
That makes total sense to me. I mean, not that it works that way, but that gaming would be the one to do it. The pressure to market is just overwhelming with games. It's a constant race against competitors, against newer hardware, against major shopping holidays - it's ridiculous. I don't think there's a way to fix the code without fixing the above.
Real programmers use butterflies
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As I am starting my new job at EA, working on the Frostbite Editor, which is easily a 1000 man years job if I were to hazard guess... The codebase is very large! And the parts I am working on are very messy... Trying to study one little bit of functionality... the code ping pong between many different classes which all work on the same data at the same time, it's very challenging to grasping it all. One might call it some sort of spaghetti code. Now.. it might seems inevitable on large project with large team... But, at the risk of being blind folded by fanboyism, I think Microsoft.NET API code looks quite neat and simple. And this is a large project API too, 20 years in the making! By a large corporation! So.. how did they do it? How does one push back against the growing complexity?
A new .NET Serializer All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar Taking over the world since 1371!
The only time I've ever had much success with that sort of thing (and I'm guessing this isn't an option here) is by sitting everybody down, writing a detailed specification for what it's *supposed* to do, then redesigning the whole thing from scratch - properly - and rewriting it. In the long term, this will actually save time, in that from that moment on, half the development effort won't be spent refactoring old code... but it's a tough job to sell something like that - tough in proportion to the size of the existing codebase, that is.
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As I am starting my new job at EA, working on the Frostbite Editor, which is easily a 1000 man years job if I were to hazard guess... The codebase is very large! And the parts I am working on are very messy... Trying to study one little bit of functionality... the code ping pong between many different classes which all work on the same data at the same time, it's very challenging to grasping it all. One might call it some sort of spaghetti code. Now.. it might seems inevitable on large project with large team... But, at the risk of being blind folded by fanboyism, I think Microsoft.NET API code looks quite neat and simple. And this is a large project API too, 20 years in the making! By a large corporation! So.. how did they do it? How does one push back against the growing complexity?
A new .NET Serializer All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar Taking over the world since 1371!
The only thing I can suggest (aside from manual review) is static analysis/linters. I use clang-tidy (which is mostly a linter, with lots of useful checks) and clang static analysis. Depending on what buildsystem you use, these can be really easy to setup. I use CMake, and have a ‘static analysis’ build that takes longer to compile, but I only build that when I’m ready to make a commit, building a debug without analysis build normally. I know that modern Visual Studio (2019, I think?) makes it simple to use clang-tidy too, as do other IDEs (QtCreator, Clion).
Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p
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As I am starting my new job at EA, working on the Frostbite Editor, which is easily a 1000 man years job if I were to hazard guess... The codebase is very large! And the parts I am working on are very messy... Trying to study one little bit of functionality... the code ping pong between many different classes which all work on the same data at the same time, it's very challenging to grasping it all. One might call it some sort of spaghetti code. Now.. it might seems inevitable on large project with large team... But, at the risk of being blind folded by fanboyism, I think Microsoft.NET API code looks quite neat and simple. And this is a large project API too, 20 years in the making! By a large corporation! So.. how did they do it? How does one push back against the growing complexity?
A new .NET Serializer All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar Taking over the world since 1371!
Why maintain complexity Super Lloyd? While all the answers seem to dissolve over time like plaque the best questions persist? There is a huge problem with the prosthetics we are wearing. They are infected with malignant complexity. All the machines we are becoming dependent on are infected with a sort of cancer that has them needing to grow constantly... the code has to grow to cover the complexity in hardware and thus the hardware has to grow to cover the code overhead and on and on... and the curve is not supportable? Reduce and streamline? I challenge code and hardware manufacturers to build it and they will buy it. It being a system made in the country where it will be used. In factories that are secure... not kind of secure but absolutely secure. Build a dedicated user platform coupled with a separate and dedicated security interface with the outside. Put in one box a processor dedicated to one job, to serve the user that is protected by an optically coupled and dedicated security processor. The vast majority of the overhead in code is due to two things. One is the need to interface with a universe of devices that are full of vulnerabilities, including those made in a competing and or adversarial country? The second is integrated security stemming from all the compatibility needs, complexity of code and constant changes in all of the above. Why, oh why, not remove the negative feedback loop completely? At least do so in the most important infrastructure? ... The current state of United States computer infrastructure is an abortion! That is not my opinion it is Word! thank you for reading my rant on how we are dependent on unnecessary complexity and prosthetic devices that are a huge threat to Humanity. blessings chuck
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Regular review, and long design cycles. Lots of dogfooding by other developers. All of which is expensive. Also, actually having a documentation and technical writing team working *with* the development team helps both parties make better stuff. And then in terms of implementation I think they had an eye toward creating a "reference implementation" from the jump so there was some feeling that your code was going to be looked over by the public to keep people honest. This is all just feels and vibes I got working from working on .NET and Visual Studio teams at Microsoft at points, nothing concrete. But I will say this: Microsoft threw a ton of money at implementing the .NET BCL precisely because it was public facing. I don't know how public facing and broadly distributed the Frostbite editor source code is, but I do know EA is a big company and *can* produce clean code if they want to. It just costs more in terms of time (and thus money) - and trust me when I say that it's a hassle to have to code to standards that such necessarily requires - as well it should be since it's almost always harder to do the Right Thing(TM)
Real programmers use butterflies
nah, they cold like hell, get the game released and move on to another job. I deal with it every day. If I could get chuckleheads to follow the design concept, but no, no one wants to hurt anyone's feelings. I deal with so much $hit code every day, some days I think my head is going to explode.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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As I am starting my new job at EA, working on the Frostbite Editor, which is easily a 1000 man years job if I were to hazard guess... The codebase is very large! And the parts I am working on are very messy... Trying to study one little bit of functionality... the code ping pong between many different classes which all work on the same data at the same time, it's very challenging to grasping it all. One might call it some sort of spaghetti code. Now.. it might seems inevitable on large project with large team... But, at the risk of being blind folded by fanboyism, I think Microsoft.NET API code looks quite neat and simple. And this is a large project API too, 20 years in the making! By a large corporation! So.. how did they do it? How does one push back against the growing complexity?
A new .NET Serializer All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar Taking over the world since 1371!
Super Lloyd wrote:
I think Microsoft.NET API code looks quite neat and simple.
It is easier to keep separation of concerns separate for libraries. Especially when they started both as a product and a library.
Super Lloyd wrote:
and simple.
Unless you want to mock some of the functionality. But when originally developed that wasn't as significant.
Super Lloyd wrote:
against the growing complexity?
Work for a startup that hasn't written any code yet.
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As I am starting my new job at EA, working on the Frostbite Editor, which is easily a 1000 man years job if I were to hazard guess... The codebase is very large! And the parts I am working on are very messy... Trying to study one little bit of functionality... the code ping pong between many different classes which all work on the same data at the same time, it's very challenging to grasping it all. One might call it some sort of spaghetti code. Now.. it might seems inevitable on large project with large team... But, at the risk of being blind folded by fanboyism, I think Microsoft.NET API code looks quite neat and simple. And this is a large project API too, 20 years in the making! By a large corporation! So.. how did they do it? How does one push back against the growing complexity?
A new .NET Serializer All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar Taking over the world since 1371!
Saw this and thought it may be useful to you: [Load Only the Projects You Need with Solution Filters | Visual Studio Blog](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/load-only-the-projects-you-need-with-solution-filters/)
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Saw this and thought it may be useful to you: [Load Only the Projects You Need with Solution Filters | Visual Studio Blog](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/load-only-the-projects-you-need-with-solution-filters/)
Quote:
Choose the projects you want to load by right clicking and selecting Reload Project or load the project and its entire dependency tree by clicking Reload Project with Dependencies.
woooa.. I have to give it a try! :)
A new .NET Serializer All in one Menu-Ribbon Bar Taking over the world since 1371!
