The computer code window is reached from the Code option that is available on several pop-up menus that provide help during use of IFs. It can also be reached from the View Code sub-option of the Options option on the Causal Driver Linkage Tracing window.

These selections of code are created by a parsing mechanism that was developed by Mohammod T. Irfan. The mechanism attempts to bring up a selection of code that helps the user understand the computation of the variable selected at the time of exercise of the option from the pop-up menu. Because the code is complex, the parsing mechanism does not always produce a 100% satisfactory extraction of code for that purpose. And the mechanism is only applied periodically in the IFs project with the code extraction saved when it is applied. Thus the code may lag somewhat behind the structure of the model. In spite of these limitations the code is usually quite useful in understanding the computation of the variable.

In addition to this mechanism for accessing the computer code, the user can also reach code from the Model Code subsection of Understanding the Model: “Opening the Black Box.” That presentation of code is by module and is therefore complete (although it can also somewhat lag the evolving model structure). The advantage of the completeness is that there is no potential confusion introduced by the automatic parsing mechanism. The disadvantage is that the code is very extensive, sometimes making it hard to find the section in which a variable of interest is computed. The combination of the parsed sections and the complete code are quite powerful tools for transparency and openness.