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I completely agree with wingerlang here, and I think the fact that the OP ends with > ... and what makes it beautiful. makes this clear. It's a subjective que

I completely agree with wingerlang here, and I think the fact that the OP ends with > ... and what makes it beautiful. makes this clear. It's a subjective question deliberately looking to elicit subjective answers, with the point of interest being the individual justifications behind those answers. However, despite my disagreement with your sentiment (calling for a more objective question), you did actually answer the question as well. Thanks for the list.

ponderatul 11y ago
Hi, that is exactly what I meant. The reasoning behind it is just as important as what it is your example. Paul Graham says in Hacker's and Painters that “... If there is such a thing as beauty, we need to be able to recognize it. We need good taste to make good things. Instead of treating beauty as an airy abstraction, to be either blathered about or avoided depending on how one feels about airy abstractions, let's try considering it as a practical question: how do you make good stuff?” So I'm really looking for patterns here. 'Clean code' seems to be a characteristic of beautiful software. Another one seems to be ' code is clever ' from what I see. That's all I'm doing here, finding some patterns. So if I would've asked what are some example of beautiful software ( where beautiful means 'clean code') I might've gotten a more focused set of responses, but then I would've missed out on the other dimensions of beautiful.
- vikrantpogula 11y ago
  Adding to this, I think one should not assume beautiful software and beautiful code to be the same thing. Just like the many dimensions of beautiful, there are many dimensions of "software", only one of which is code. Beautiful software should solve a problem. It should fit in like a cog to empower humans to do lot more things or do things which were harder to do before. Beautiful software includes a lot more things than just code or how code is written.

ponderatul 11y ago

Hi, that is exactly what I meant. The reasoning behind it is just as important as what it is your example. Paul Graham says in Hacker's and Painters that “... If there is such a thing as beauty, we need to be able to recognize it. We need good taste to make good things. Instead of treating beauty as an airy abstraction, to be either blathered about or avoided depending on how one feels about airy abstractions, let's try considering it as a practical question: how do you make good stuff?” So I'm really looking for patterns here. 'Clean code' seems to be a characteristic of beautiful software. Another one seems to be ' code is clever ' from what I see. That's all I'm doing here, finding some patterns. So if I would've asked what are some example of beautiful software ( where beautiful means 'clean code') I might've gotten a more focused set of responses, but then I would've missed out on the other dimensions of beautiful.

vikrantpogula 11y ago
Adding to this, I think one should not assume beautiful software and beautiful code to be the same thing. Just like the many dimensions of beautiful, there are many dimensions of "software", only one of which is code. Beautiful software should solve a problem. It should fit in like a cog to empower humans to do lot more things or do things which were harder to do before. Beautiful software includes a lot more things than just code or how code is written.