📔 Software Complexity Development Notes

Notes and ideas taken while working on Complexity.

Abstract Syntax Trees

More complex source code analysis requires the use of 🌳 Abstract Syntax Trees, which is language-dependent.

AST Explorer is a tool to play around with ASTs from different languages.

• Kotlin ASTs

TypeScript AST

• TypeScript Compiler API
  • A dedicated section on traversing the AST
• TypeScript ASTs: Introduction to TypeScript ASTs
• typescript4j: Java library to compile TypeScript files. Has been archived since 2021.

Concept

Since it doesn’t seem to be possible to run through the AST from within Kotlin (or Java), I’m thinking of running the TypeScript compiler in a TypeScript program and outputting the data in JSON format to be parsed by the main Kotlin program.

Charts

As part of my Design Principle “Visual”, I think it’s important to visualise data to simplify interpretation.

Considered options:

• 🧑‍💻️ Charts in Kotlin, but I don’t want to immediately start with a heavy-weight library like JavaFX
• 🐍 Python as a post-processing script
• 🧑‍💻️ Frontend Development, JavaScript/TypeScript Charting libraries

Sources

• 📝 Reading Notes - Measuring Software Complexity: What Metrics to Use?