CRcratermoon·Feb 11, 2023
Get a copy of "Your code as a crime scene", then check out two GitHub repos
https://github.com/adamtornhill/code-maat
https://github.com/smontanari/code-forensics
In Ask HN: Measurements of Code Quality?adamtornhill
code-maat
Clojure2015–2023
adamtornhill / code-maat
code-maat
A command line tool to mine and analyze data from version-control systems
10Distinct people
10Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
2.7KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
A command line tool to mine and analyze data from version-control systems
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year10 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-06-29 08:59:07 UTC to 2023-02-11 04:51:44 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
10 sourcesHe also wrote Your Code as a Crime Scene and authored the open source tool, Code Maat. I've found both extremely useful in my current job where I took over a code base with immense technical debt. AFIK, Code Scene is a commercial version of Code Maat.
https://github.com/adamtornhill/code-maat
In The Business Impact of Code QualityIt's not as neat as that unfortunately. You use this to extract different data from the version control history: https://github.com/adamtornhill/code-maat
Then visualize it however. I have some d3 scripts that came with the book that I've modified and you can track down somewhere on github I'm pretty sure. I mostly use those for demoing it to devs unfamiliar with the techniques though, since it looks cool and is immediately obvious what it's for.
For serious use I dump it into sqlite and use a mix of different scripts and techniques to figure it out. It's been kind of a language playground for me over the years so is in a lot of different languages and is "learning code" in most of them. Cleaning them up and sharing is one of those "maybe some day" things though.
In Code quality only matters in context (2019)Code Maat – CLI tool to mine and analyze data from version-control systems
2 points · Open discussionIt could if you were smart about it. See the scripts at:
https://github.com/adamtornhill/code-maat
You could identify high quality devs that are suddenly funemployed with a burst of github activity - and reach out to them in a non-sleazy manner.
In GitHub Won’t Help You with HiringSee the work by Adam Tornhill
https://github.com/adamtornhill/code-maat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWhBmJJZoNM
https://pragprog.com/book/atcrime/your-code-as-a-crime-scene
https://pragprog.com/book/atevol/software-design-x-rays
In What the Four Color Theorem Can Teach Us About Writing SoftwareCode Maat: command line tool to mine and analyze data from version-control systems
12 points · Open discussionOnly somewhat related, the really neat tool code-maat[0] can do a lot with your commit data, but it uses plain CSV. It provides a bunch of canned reports you can run on your repo as well.
[0] https://github.com/adamtornhill/code-maat
In Git log in JSON formatnever tried it myself, but you can take a look at the accompanying code "Your Code as a Crime Scene"
https://github.com/adamtornhill/code-maat
In Ask HN: How do you familiarize yourself with a new codebase?