Just for fun, here is a visualization of work on a software project I was involved in (The ASCOM Platform). In this video, each second of real time represents about 10 calendar days.The project begins in early 2009 when we imported an existing codebase representing ASCOM Platform 5.0. The video depicts people working on the code over time, you can see them flying around the screen ‘zapping’ files. Each dot represents a file, each line represents a directory. Dots appear when the file is created or modified and persist for a few seconds, then fade away. So, the total number of dots on the screen is some indication of the ‘velocity’ of the project at that time.
This is quite the most fascinating and beautiful thing I have seen in a long time. It really gives a sense of software being an organic thing. It also gives an idea of how ‘code rot’ can occur. Software often depends on other pieces of software, each of which will have something like this video happening to them over time. If the code isn’t evolved and maintained, then the world around it moves on and it slowly becomes irrelevant and useless. Just like to infamous Tamagotchi, you have to feed it, or it dies!
