Apologies for my long absence from the blog, but business is really picking up. I’ve probably scanned more legacy source in the past month than the entire previous year. I am always amazed that the uniqueness of every application. As part of our routine scan, we produce a static diagram using the 'R' Statistical package and a ‘R’ library package called iGraph. Together this allows us to produce Fruchterman-Reingold layout, which is what you see above. It is interesting to collect these and contrast and compare to one another.
Below are fifteen applications taken from thirty I recently scanned. We are beginning to recognize patterns that tell useful things immediately.
The very red layouts in the top left are applications with very little cloned code. The redness is cause by the lack of any forces pulling the modules(red dots) toward one another. Whiteness is caused by modules being drawn toward one another. Think of legacy code as gravity, acting on the modules. We end up with clusters and these clusters indicate similar code. As we navigate into these clusters we discover what I call the unintended design. Unintended yes, but I could imagine some on my wall, or maybe a t-shirt.
Until next time, please feel free to leave us a comment, let us know you're thoughts and opinions. If you'd like to see more or less of any topic, let us know.
