[soganess]

Wait, pardon my ignorance, but isn't a decompiler required for the kind of work they do at react?

Person A's Job:

- Decompile shit.

- Then write down the names of the functions with (1) input, (2) output, (3) a description of what person a think the code is doing (4) any side effect / preconditions / post conditions they can deduce.

Person B's Job:

- Take the spec created by person A and write code.

while(missingFunctionality.hasNext): goto Person A's Job

[saagarjha]

It is and the split between person A doing the first part and person B doing the second part is important in a "clean room" reimplementation in the US.

[opencl]

A lot of stuff is based or observing the Windows functionality in a debugger, or Microsoft's API documentation.

[rootw0rm]

decompiler vs. disassembler is an important distinction here