The past, present and future of software visualisation
Andrew McCluskey
Visualisation
- A form of analysis
- Specifically – how do I take some data and present it in a more intuitive, understandable or interesting way.
- Often applied to large datasets
- Example: Most people will have a mental visualisation of how their code ‘looks’
Crossing Borders
Static vs. Dynamic Software Analysis
Static Analysis
- Before Runtime
-
Detect simple problems
- Semicolons?
- Code smells?
- Examples
- Lint Tools
- Compilers
Dynamic Analysis
- At Runtime
-
Can detect emergent behaviour
- Memory Leaks
- Deadlocks
- Examples
- Valgrind (C)
- VisualVM (Java)
Early Software Visualisation
- 1966, Bell Labs dynamic visualisation of a linked list, much like last example
UML
Widely used visualisation of software artefactsUML Class Diagram: Static or Dynamic?
UML Object Diagram: Static or Dynamic?
Modern Software Visualisation
Code Cities
- Packages become blocks
- Classes become buildings
-
Height/width of building
- Complexity
- Lines
- Methods
- GoCity – GoLang cities
Colony
- Visualise NPM dependencies
-
Force directed graph
- Module dependency encourages locality
-
Force directed graph
- Function interaction
- Class coupling
Jive
- 2D realtime visualisation
- Java
- Stack depth
- Heap allocation behaviour
Future Directions
3D Printing
- Intangible software -> physical model
- Physical, interactive model v. 3D on a monitor
Multi-user, VR Code Cities
- Oculus Rift + Microsoft Kinect v2 – Fittkau et al.
- Integrate a VR software city with Kataribe - Ichinose, et al.
- How about using as an IDE?
Further Reading
VR Learning: vCoder
