[yboris]

I've been surprised there isn't more of "Call graph" automatic generation for code. I would have thought having a visual representation of which functions call which functions can in some cases help tremendously.

I started working on TypeScript Call Graph to see if it's useful -- an experiment of sorts [1]

Could anyone chime in about call graphs and whether they are useful?

[1] https://github.com/whyboris/TypeScript-Call-Graph/pull/1

[recursivecaveat]

My experience is that such diagrams are only useful if they are hand-designed, not auto-generated. To make a diagram with explanatory power in practice you have to make a lot of decisions about what's relevant, which requires a sortof mental model and some common sense. Jetbrains IDEs can generate call graphs, but they look like absolute spaghetti because they're totally dominated by omnipresent but irrelevant details, like exactly how the logger is threaded through the call chain, or that hundreds of functions call User.id(). Same thing goes for class diagrams. You wouldn't start explaining AbstractEvent by enumerating all 70 child classes, but a program will totally warp the whole diagram to fit them all. They also have the problem that some links are much stronger conceptually than others. A should have an arrow to B because it's semantically a container for Bs, but B having a member of type A because it knows its owner shouldn't even be displayed.