this happens a lot, I want to find out how something works but I don’t know the said programming language and so I can’t read the source code, I’ve tried looking up stuff in cheatsheets but they don’t really help that much and Search Engines are obviously useless for this since they can’t search symbols, so how do you read the source code without spending time learning the language ?

  • Wyndix
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    31 year ago

    Hmmm what lang is it? It’s always generally easy to read

    • @Icarus@lemmy.mlOP
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      11 year ago

      I bascally have trouble with anything that’s not like pseudo-code (i.e. Python) and C-style syntax, although I can probably read PHP too.

      • Wyndix
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        31 year ago

        Oh! I’m one month late sorry, well, that’s completely normal. You just need to pay attention and google as many definitions as you need to. Remember, Google is your friend here. Especially if the source code is powered by many external libraries.

        Eventually with time and patience you’ll be able to make a structure of the code inside your mind and from there it should be a breeze. You can also ask a contributor to guide you through the codebase and explain some things to you, they’re always glad to help a potential mate :)