UPDATE: I've decided to start studying basic 3D graphics, and see if I can't make a demo of this concept. If nothing else, it'll be good to see if it's plausible (both as a project and as far as my abilities go).
...so I'm posting it here because I think it's rather intriguing. I was thinking - a terribly dangerous thing to do at the best of times - about objects and functions and such, and how they're basically they're own little units in a codebase. And I was thinking about UML and how it expresses relationships between classes. And then I was thinking about my failed attempt at trying to replicate that... in Notepad. [lol] But the relationships between those units of code intrigued me... and then I began thinking of atoms. Ohsnap, lightbulb anyone?
Atoms are composed of electrons, neutrons, and protons... lets not go into quarks. Depending on the arrangements and numbers of these particles, you get different atoms with different properties. What's more, these atoms can bond with other atoms, creating complex molecules. And these molecules can interact with other molecules in a myriad of ways.
(Can you tell that I'm really getting into this analogy?)
Alright, point being, I believe that one could represent code as particles. And something I would really, really like to see - and perhaps be a part of its development - is a software imager that parses .obj files from a project and creates a 3D scene visualizing the relationships between everything. A class would be represented up close (zoomed in, selected, whichever you like) as an atom, with the nucleus as its member variables, and the electrons as orbiting functions. Further out the class would simply be a sphere, its radius defined by how many variables and functions it contains.
Obviously you can draw many parallels between code units and atomic constructs... which is the point. Not only would it be really, really cool to see how your program looks as an atomic construct, it'd be a highly visual way to see where code is too coupled, where you have linker errors (represented by a connection highlighted in some obviously erroneous way), et cetera. Perhaps it would be integrated into an IDE's toolset.
You could think of it as a highly descriptive descendant of UML. And I'd start working on this project myself, except that I have absolutely zero experience with 3D graphics. And that's a pity, because someone will probably read this and go "I can do that!" and I'd wake up one day to find out someone's started a company called Solar Twilight Enterprises, selling a 3D atomic codeview application. [wink]
Well... if any of you are interested in this, please drop me a comment or PM. Maybe I could get someone who knows the 3D-representational side of things. [smile]
~Jonathan
