How Code Visualization Improves Developer Productivity

Author: Gacoka Mbui

Date Published: November 10th, 2022

The Software Development Process

Software development not only involves the design, development and documentation of new code for innovative results but also the optimization and debugging of existing code. Oftentimes, developers dig through the weeds of existing source code to expand functionality and improve features. When dealing with a large project with complicated code, it is not a trivial task without code visualization. Tools such as debuggers assist in navigating and inspecting code, but lack important features that show the big picture — visualization and querying.

How Code Visualization makes the debugging process easier

Code visualization helps bridge the gap between your imagination and a system's appearance. It is a useful tool to comprehend what you are working on by making it easier and simpler. To achieve this, source code can be decomposed and visualized using the help of Code Property Graphs.

Code Property Graphs

Code Property Graphs are a data structure mainly designed to mine larger code bases, for example, programming patterns. It works as a sole intermediate program representation across all languages and are intended to be code-agnostic and highly scalable making it one of the best choices for code representation.

A Code Property Graph in action.

The data structure combines three compiler level diagrams i.e. abstract syntax trees, program dependency graphs and control flow graphs to explain the in a human understandable format.

Code property graphs are particularly property graphs composed of the following elements:

• Nodes and their types
• Labeled directed edges
• Key value pairs

Benefits of Code Visualization

Here are some benefits of code visualization tools and expert code visualizers in improving productivity.

Identify and Fix Bugs

Code visualization tools are the fastest way to nd transparent bugs. They visualize code sections that cause bottlenecks and memory leaks etc. and offer a simple structure to find bugs. It is useful to find bugs in high-level performance inspection to get you back to building high-quality applications.

Conceptualize Large-Scale Projects

Big projects have complex codes which are hectic to comprehend. With the help of code visualization tools, you can have a big picture on one page. These tools show the code in simpler and in the form of graphs to easily gure out problems and move to improvements.

Visualize Dependencies

You can see the code in the form of graphs. These visual representations describe the dependency of an entity in the system. The useful code visualization graphs include line charts, area charts and scatter plots, etc.

Collaborate with Others

Visualizing code is useful for collaborating with other developers and coders. It gives you the model of what you want and what the result should be. With a better demonstration, the other side can better understand and give results.

Understand the Use of Flow

The codes are the structure but do not show what is going on if you are not a pro coder. The code visualization will make it easier to keep a check on the user ow. It gives an opportunity to regularize it.

Drawbacks of Code Visualization

There are minimal drawbacks to code visualization most of which can be improved through guidance. While code visualization allow developers to conceptualize their code, multiple interactive components can clutter the screen. Since the results appear in the form of graphs and diagrams, multiple nodes can make it hard to navigate through the code. However, through collapsing and expanding child nodes e.g. setting the AST as a sub-child of the call graph, developers can now walk into and through the code like an accountant opens into a cabinet of files.

Wrap Up

Code visualization makes the debugging process easier for developers and analysts by turning code into an interconnected web. A graph data structure makes it easy to spot the attributes of an class, value of a variable or files in a directory and see what its dependencies are.

Visualizing Code Property Graphs not only develops better understanding of source code but also makes it easier to guide others around it. Visualizing code is essential for efficient and clean development. The visualization provides a clear path to the outcome when working in a complex web-like structure. They show the current situation of the code and the idea of the outcome after implementation.