How To Understand New Code 

1. Environment… 0:52 2. Understand the Build Process… 5:00 3. Debug Code… 7:46 4. Testing… 10:28 5. Deployment… 12:26 6. Neighbors… 14:13 your answer was really awesome... such a great comprehensive overview... feel free to copy or pin the TOC to the top of your video...

Came back to this video after working for over a year and I have to say, these words are gold, guys. I would especially stress #3 for newer devs. For web development, you can start from a view, follow it out to a controller or some function it's calling somewhere, place a breakpoint on that, run the code, step through it, place more break points that on functions being run in the current flow,, and keep doing this until you've isolated all the relevant code from the rest for a given use case. Isolating the problems or relevant code from everything else and breaking them down into smaller steps or tasks, that's key! Great videos, Dave!

I rewatch these videos every now and then (even years later) as a refresher. Keep making them. Great advice

Good video, these are solid real world ways to get familiar with a code base. Very valuable for people new to software engineering.

Very good advice man. I like to learn better ways of coding or immersing myself on a programming language I just learned by reading the code of developers I respect, your break down of the steps makes it so much easier.

Best resource so far on this subject. This model helped me the most at my new job (first dev job). Thank you man

Thanks for the breakdown Dave. I am starting an internship soon, this process should come in handy :)

Thank you. I really like how you explain things. Appreciate it.

It's like you're doing free style especially when I play you at 2x the Hand movements ... that's skill I like

Love your vids, dude. :)

Subbed! The best video on this subject matter for sure! I am taking his advice to heart. I just graduated w/ my CS degree and will be starting my full-time SW job in 6 weeks (Aerospace, C++). Even though I also have 3 years Co-Op experience with a similar company, I do not want to be "that guy". I am eager to hit the ground running and will prep as best as I can for my new job!! Keep up the great work Dave, your content is some of the best out there!!

Awesome video Dave, thanks

You are awesome Dave!!!

this is always how i approach a project but to hear u say it is very insightful..

Your videos are concise & summarized well done.

I really like your videos. keep making them.

Thanks for the sharing. It helps me understand my company's code.

Hi dave I am a CSE students, little late to this video but I found it really helpful. Thank you

Thanks for the video man.

Thanks coz this is my first JOB switch... helpful indeed (y)

yeah Dave thanks for the video.

love the video..thanks a lot :)

another great video.

Awesome explanation; thanks bro

Awesome...

100% correct and Excellent explanation

Just joined new team as Fullstack dev, I swear down the codebase is weird as hell, And components are so large, its crazy

What mic do you use?

You speak so slowly (or clearly?) that i can understand you on 4x speed o.o nice 4 minute video

At work we built our project to run on any OS, so everyone just uses whatever they want.

Lately I had to switch from a simple to understand PHP4 compatible home-brew-framework codebase with MySQL to a different app, an enormous PHP 5.6 Symphony + Sonata + PDO + PostgreSQL project with queues and all of that distributed over many virtual machines... written by a team of *Java developers* ...it's so abstract and so over complicated that our LSP processes often just refuse to work with it. I wish we all didn't had to go through a similar experience every two years or so.

Hey Dave. Awesome vid. Couple of questions. What are the main differences between Computer Science and Software Engineering? Also when you completed your masters in CS, what was your specialisation/major and did you enjoy it? I'm starting first year CS next year and am kinda torn on specialisation as my uni offers several such as data science, cybersecurity.

Could do a small video on the subject of this article (peronsal side projects and intellectual property of companies). www.joelonsoftware.com/2016/12/09/developers-side-projects/. Or maybe legal stuff in general for developers

Are you going to watch Rogue One?

A developer should never go around updating dependency versions if the team's not on board. This is just asking for trouble, every engineer should be seeing an identical local environment.

3 & 4 could have interchanged hierarchy

My app is 3 apps in one

Find a mentor, don't try this alone or you'll scream and curse at your co-workers and will get fired

I built a APP I NEED YOU TO MAKE ME A CODE SO IUT CAN WORK