Ask HN: What are some of the ways to learn codebases

Learning a codebase requires fast navigation. ctags or a good IDE help with that.

"Follow the money!" - but instead of money, follow the data;

- sort source code by filesize

- look at the large methods / code blocks

- browse through the /examples/ and /tests/ dirs to familiarize yourself with typical usage

Runtime call tracing is the missing methodology. I haven't found anything better over the years and always implement them if I have to learn things quickly. Made one for nginx even.

thank you. Could you elaborate on this method please?

Biggest thing for me is to talk to whomever wrote it, or if they're not available, whomever has the most knowledge of the codebase.