Septum: Context-based code search tool | Hacker News Reader

Septum: Context-based code search tool

github.com

45 pointsingve6 comments

Built in ADA? Fascinating. What does ADA offer that makes this kind of task easier?

The language writes with a straightforward conceptual simplicity people like from C, while giving you a decent standard library, easy binding to C, typed pointers, native executables with no garbage collector, and built-in concurrency types (protected types for controlling read/write access and tasks).

The Alire tool (https://alire.ada.dev/) can grab the toolchains you need to set up super quick, and acts sort of like rustup/cargo or npm or cmake/vcpkg(or conan).

Ada's super verbose on the surface, but you pretty much just write your intent and it usually "just works." The surface verboseness hides a lot of the benefits of the language in additional compile and runtime checks that you might have to write yourself in other languages.

The bulk of the search functionality was written in my first two months with the language. I wrote the tool for myself for searching big codebases (1+ million LoC) and I've been using it nearly every day at work for the last year. It serves a different purpose than ripgrep or silver searcher, those are great tools I'd also highly recommend.

I don't usually develop on Mac, but I have experimental support for that and some Linux fixes coming in a 0.0.7 version when I get around to publishing it.

I’ll be interested to see if others here have a similar aversion to the name, septum, completely separate from the tool itself. Septum is both a very biological word and a word with an almost visceral, bodily intonation. The vision of nasal passages, mucous, deviated septums, etc. Additionally, all the bodily words ending in -tum immediately end up associated in my mind.

Is the name supposed to be illustrative of the adjacency of search results? Or, what is the root of this name, if you’re willing to entertain such a question after hearing my bias?

The name is a reference to the filters operating on the text in smaller contexts rather than being entirely line based. I looked for a bunch of terms about division and filtering and this one seemed to fit best, while also being short and unique enough for people to be able to find and remember.

There's various types of biological uses of the term, such as in fruit, heart walls and cell division, but I definitely wasn't trying to be vulgar with the name.

It reminds me of septum piercings which I personally think are pretty cool

Despite knowing the biological term, my first thought was still the in-game currency in the Elder Scrolls games.

"Do you have a septim or two for an old beggar like me?"

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