this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2022
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How do you read source code of open source programs if you don't know the language its written in ? (lemmy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by Icarus@lemmy.ml to c/programming@lemmy.ml
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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 ?

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[–] Wyndix@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

[–] Icarus@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years 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 :)