Evaluating a Visual Approach for Understanding JavaScript Source Code
Martín Dias, Diego Fuenzalida Orellana, Santiago A. Vidal, Leonel Merino, Alexandre Bergel · 2020
To characterize the building blocks of a legacy software system (e.g., structure, dependencies), programmers usually spend a long time navigating its source code. Yet, modern integrated development environments (IDEs) do not provide appropriate means to efficiently achieve complex software comprehension tasks. To deal with this unfulfilled need, we present Hunter, a tool for the visualization of JavaScript applications. Hunter visualizes source code through a set of coordinated views that include a node-link diagram that depicts the dependencies among the components of a system, and a treemap that helps programmers to orientate when navigating its structure.