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Comment by Who828 | Hacker News Reader

Hey pat, how do you understand the internal code so well ? I read your free chapter on Ruby's Hash table and I loved every bit of it. It would be great if you can share the process you go through when you read the source code, so maybe I can apply it in the future. By the way, congrats for the release !

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The code for MRI is.. idiomatic, but actually pretty easy to read. I last did C full time in the 90s and so am mostly just a 'reader' now but it's not hard to follow, although some of the reasoning behind doing things a certain way in MRI is unfathomable.. ;-)

Exactly, Peter. It's not tremendously hard to read the C code and understand what it is doing (usually), if you're familiar with C syntax. But it was tremendously difficult at times understanding _why_ it was doing what it was doing.

I don't understand the wording of your first sentence. Did you mean "idiotic" or?

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=define%3Aidiom

Yes, thanks. I know what idiomatic means, but the OP either does not or just wrote an awkward sentence.

Pat probably meant 'idiosyncratic' instead of 'idiomatic' (unless it's a non-idiomatic use of 'idiomatic').

'Idiosyncratic' is clearer, though 'idiomatic' is valid and what I wished to say, but in its secondary definition: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/idiomatic (see def 2)

Oh, OK. I've never seen "idiomatic" used with a negative connotation before.

Hey thanks for asking - and yes, in the preface to the book I do explain how I figure this stuff out. But basically I: - study the C code for a long time - step through it in GDB a lot - add printf statements and recompile it to print out debug/trace info - actually change it to see what would happen if things were written differently.

A lot of hard work! I do the hard work so you don't have to :)

Your process is something I'd like an ebook or screencast about. Perhaps others would find it interesting as well.

Yea I've thought about that. Let me see what I can do... :) thanks.

I suspect buying the book might yield some info like that.

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