Disclaimer : I am a hobbyist programmer, I have not gone to Uni for that , so I might not know everything I am talking about.
My question is why don’t open source programs include something like diagrams of the algorithms they employ ?? I Was looking for algorithms for a chat program with client-server architecture, I was hoping to find diagrams and descriptions of how algorithms work, so a to study them an adapt them to my needs. All I found were FOSS projects with no such documentation.
Considering that reading source code can take a long time, and sometimes interesting projects are written in a language the user isn’t familiar with, I was wondering why such documentation style doesn’t exist ? It could help even newer contributors get started quicker.
“algorithm” is a little too fine grained for what you describe. “software design patterns” is probably what you are looking for.
unfortunately, not all projects call out the patterns they employ.
Most software is poorly documented. That applies to FOSS as much as to commercial projects.
Considering that reading source code can take a long time
You’ll get faster over time, until reading code is faster than reading documentation, as code will always represent what’s truly happening, while docs are frequently outdated.
In a language the user isn’t familiar with
If you’re not that familiar with the language, it’s likely you won’t be contributing to the project. Open source projects usually to have quite limited resources, so they tend to optimize docs and dev UX for people who are likely to contribute.