Understanding other people's code

[Eric S. Johansson]

On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 10:22:59 -0400, L O'Shea <lo0446 at my.bristol.ac.uk>  
wrote:

> Literally any idea will help, pen and paper, printing off all the code  
> and doing some sort of highlighting session - anything! I keep reading  
> bits of code and thinking "well where the hell has that been defined and  
> what does it mean" to find it was inherited from 3 modules up the chain.  
> I really need to get a handle on how exactly all this slots together!  
> Any techniques,tricks or methodologies that people find useful would be  
> much appreciated.

glad to hear you're having a WTF moment (what's that function). Suggestion  
would be index cards, each containing notes on a class. truly understand  
what each parent class is in which methods are to be overloaded. Then look  
at one child and understand how it. Work your way breadth first down the  
inheritance tree.