Sean Halle

Branches for various levels of complexity

We were talking about also having branches that add more advanced features. Actually simplify the main branch, strip things out. Then add other branches, the ratchet up the complexity.

For example, add caches in a different branch, and add multi-core in a different branch. Right.. we actually discussed a system of branches. What do you think about possibly choosing names for the branches that are descriptive of the goal of the branch?

Vision of "commented" branch in Sodor repository

Kritik created a separate branch, that add verbose comments to the code

The important thing will be making this obvious and advertising its existence to everyone, so that beginners don't struggle, and then later discover a commented version exists.

Also, it will be important to make it quick and easy to switch between the two. And it will be important to make it easy to keep the two in sync.

I'm thinking that in practice, people will jump back and forth often.. at first most time in commented version.. then gradually spend more time in non-commmented version..

As spend more time in non-commented, they will start jumping -- hit a place where they don't understand, jump over to commented version, then jump back.

!!! From Slack discussions: Those fresh off journey, thrown into project involving Rocket Chip R: "Initially I've been trying to understand how everything is put together, for instance how classes and traits from other packages are being called in the file, cache configuration etc. Then I treied to understand the L2 cache code. Still working on it."

K: "Right now, I am trying to understand the overall architecture, figuring out what's been placed in rocket chip. The scala codes placed inside src are quite daunting and require much focus to get better understanding for me."

A: "yes, the whole thing is very complex and the programming paradigm, the code practice is terribly abstract Sean and myself came to a conclusion that the key lays within the lazy modules and their instantiations - have you had the chance to learn about lazy?"