Code Swarm: Organic Visualization of Project Development
Michael Ogawa from the University of California has devised a technique for visualizing the historic development of software projects with his Code Swarm experiment.
Ogawa is a member of the "Visualization and Interface Design Innovation Group" and has departed from traditional visualization techniques that were too rigid in his opinion. Code Swarm attempts to visualize the interactions between developers, their input and contributions in an organic manner. When a developer contributes code or documents, the developer's name, and contribution - color coded by contribution type – is added to the developer cloud. Inactive developers are removed. Eclipse, Apache, Python, and PostgreSQL have been implemented as examples of lively software development projects. Check out the experiment here.
The scientist from the University of California will be looking to publish the application he used to implement Code Swarm, however, he will need time to clean up the code before going Open Source, he says.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
-
Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
-
Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
-
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
-
TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
-
Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.