Understanding other people's code

[Azureaus]

On Friday, July 12, 2013 3:22:59 PM UTC+1, Azureaus wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've been asked to take over a project from someone else and to extend the functionality of this. The project is written in Python which I haven't had any real experience with (although I do really like it) so I've spent the last week or two settling in, trying to get my head around Python and the way in which this code works.
> 
> 
> 
> The problem is the code was clearly written by someone who is exceptionally good and seems to inherit everything from everywhere else. It all seems very dynamic, nothing is written statically except in some configuration files. 
> 
> Basically the problem is I am new to the language and this was clearly written by someone who at the moment is far better at it than I am!
> 
> 
> 
> I'm starting to get pretty worried about my lack of overall progress and so I wondered if anyone out there had some tips and techniques for understanding other peoples code. There has to be 10/15 different scripts with at least 10 functions in each file I would say.
> 
> 
> 
> 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.

Thank you to everyone who replied constructively, the various suggestions all helped a lot. I'd like to suggest to anyone who reads this in the future who is in a similar situation to do as David Chess suggested and install eclipse with pydev. Although I prefer to use Sublime to actually write code, Eclipse turned out to be invaluable in helping me jump around and understand the code especially how things were passed around) and for debugging things over the last few days. Success!
Cheers everyone.