this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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Programming

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Disclaimer : I am a hobbyist programmer, I have not gone to Uni for that , so I might not know everything I am talking about.

My question is why don't open source programs include something like diagrams of the algorithms they employ ?? I Was looking for algorithms for a chat program with client-server architecture, I was hoping to find diagrams and descriptions of how algorithms work, so a to study them an adapt them to my needs. All I found were FOSS projects with no such documentation.

Considering that reading source code can take a long time, and sometimes interesting projects are written in a language the user isn't familiar with, I was wondering why such documentation style doesn't exist ? It could help even newer contributors get started quicker.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Personally I will jot some loose notes down if I'm implementing something thats sufficiently difficult, but formalizing the design patterns/algorithms is very time consuming so I don't.