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Visibility Jam

April 14 - 16, 2O23

See things in a new way.
See the results Join the Discord

Too many things in computing are invisible.

Bugs linger for years because nobody can see their effects. We run arcane command line tools just to find out what port a program is using. Your computer is full of helpful information, but no one can use it until someone makes it visible.

So for this jam, make it visible. Maybe it's a data structure in your program. Maybe it's some obscure metrics from your operating system. Maybe it's your sleep schedule. Whether you make a Graphviz diagram or an experimental code editor, you have a weekend to make it happen.

Read the recap

Now that the jam is over, see which projects stood out. Full post ➜

Submitted projects

WhiteBox

WhiteBox is a live code visualizer/debugger. It is a tool to show developers how their code behaves as they write it.
Andrew Reece

Diffest

What if your diff tool worked with code, not text?
abec

REDE

IDE for Regular Expressions ;)
BYP

LaMDWiki Activity Visualizer

This is going to be a small visualizer for my own blog software LaMDWiki.
Wu Yiming

scatter

Immediate mode plotting layer
tomthornt0n

Slider

Visualizing Text
oofoe
paultarvydas

Odin0D

Visualize software components written in the Odin language and snap components together like LEGO blocks to form software systems.
paultarvydas
z64

Standoff Markup Explorer

A visualizer for standoff-based text encoding with comparisons to HTML and Markdown.
Jess Martin

NES Visibility Tools

A disassembler and memory viewer for a NES emulator
bitwitch

y no server

A tool to show you why your server isn't serving.
Ben Visness

uloc - Unique Lines of Code

Simple CLI tool to count the number of unique lines in source files.
IcyLava

Escape Artist

View Source, but for terminal escape sequences.
Reilly Wood

Memview

Memview is a memory profiler and visualizer.
Reuben Dunnington

The Blazing Web

See just how "fast" the web really is.
Asaf Gartner

Podcastoscope

Renders a multi-track audio-visualization
Allen Webster

Mark's JSON Viewer

Native JSON viewer. Just press CTRL-ALT-J after copying some JSON to your clipboard
mark.dev

ELF viewer

ELF viewer/loader simulator
Yasser Arguelles

String Memory Visualizer

A simple way to visualize how my string memory allocator works.
markersniffen

PNG Chunk Explorer

Explore the chunks that make up a PNG.
Evan Hahn

struct-vis

visualize all the data structures in a C program
church

Object Disaster

Object file dependency graph generator
tanoxyz

Introspect

Introspect is a tool that lets you browse a C file as a web of declarations and usages
creikey

ExpertMemer - EXPERimenTal MEMory access visualizER

A Visibility Jam 2023 experiment/proof of concept for visualizing memory access with cache line granularity.
ChristianB
See all updates

Inspiration

Gource lets you watch the structure of a codebase change over time.
See how often third-party packages ship breaking changes.
Graphviz can be used to make debug visuals for almost any data structure.
Wireshark exposes all activity on all your network devices.
Flamegraphs let you see the big picture of code execution, not just summary stats.
Bugs can be very obvious when you render out the data. (Example: a random number generator.)
Webpack Bundle Analyzer lets you see which JS libraries are causing the most bloat.
vmmap allows you to see exactly how your address space is allocated.

How to participate

The jam takes place from Friday, April 14 through Sunday, April 16. Here's how you can participate:

Pick a project.

Pick something to visualize! If you want, you can brainstorm ideas in #jam on Discord. You can also use this time to form a team - or you can choose to work solo.

Jam.

Create a Handmade Network project. This project will act as your submission and can be used to share your work in progress. Then get started! Share screenshots and videos in #project-showcase on Discord, or directly from your project page.

Submit your work!

Your Handmade Network project is your submission. Fill out the project description, making sure to explain the goals of the project and what inspired you to visualize it. Include plenty of pictures and videos!

Submissions are now closed.

Rules

  • Any tech is allowed.
  • You may work solo or in a team.
  • Submit your work by the end of the day on April 16.

We will not be declaring winners, but we will publicly highlight some of our favorite entries after the jam.

Submission rules

Your Handmade Network project is your submission. We will be looking at the project's description and any extra updates you share toward the end of the jam.

  • Explain the project and what inspired you to visualize it. Also share some closing thoughts - did it turn out how you hoped? What did you learn? If you continue the project, what will you do differently?
  • Your description must contain multiple screenshots of your software in action. You should ideally also share a project update with a demo video. We recommend Mārtiņš Možeiko's wcap for recording desktop video on Windows. On Mac, just press ⌘-Option-5 and record a video, or use QuickTime.
  • If at all possible, please provide a way for people to either build or download your program, or to interact with any visualizations you produce.