10 ms·

Ask HN: What are examples of GitHub repositories with high code quality?

147 points by baccheion 10y ago

The language doesn't really matter. I'm trying to see examples of what people consider high quality code (clean, elegant, well-formatted, algorithmically beautiful, etc).

roschdal 10y ago
https://github.com/torvalds/linux https://github.com/torvalds/linux
- loosescrews 10y ago
  Have you actually ever read any of the Linux source code? I find it pretty hard to read to be honest. There are barely any comments and the ones that are there are often not very helpful.
  - yzh 10y ago
    I highly recommend this gitbook to you: https://0xax.gitbooks.io/linux-insides/content/index.html https://0xax.gitbooks.io/linux-insides/content/index.html
    - ewjordan 10y ago
      "Read the docs" is not an excuse for incomprehensible source code. If links to documentation are not in the code, they might as well be nonexistent. In this case, I've never read the sources, so I have no idea if the complaint is valid.
      - simoncion 10y ago
        > If links to documentation are not in the code, they might as well be nonexistent. Yeesh. I must either be getting old, or everyone is significantly more busy than I am. I find that I always have time to at least locate any official documentation for the thing that I'm working with.
  - eps 10y ago
    I worked with several Linux parts extensively and the code is really good in terms of readability, flow and overall layout.
- zbuf 10y ago
  You'd have to explain to me what you think makes the Linux code of particularly high quality; I don't think it's a good fit for the criteria in the question. Whilst it may well well engineered as a project of this size, the code I have seen leaves a lot to be desired. Cases that spring to mind are the mm code and cgroups where, as an outsider, I got the impression of a large codebase where the patch delta is kept to a minimum -- perhaps so as not to introduce new bugs as features are added. But this doesn't necessarily mean the resulting code has a logical structure or layering; it means deciphering it involves as much studying of the Git history as it does of the (sparsely commented) code on the screen. In contrast, my experiences in the FreeBSD code have been much better, with less spaghetti and even to the point of maintained man pages for key internal functions.
phaas 10y ago
Here's a couple of projects that I've been personally impressed with. I hope you don't mind a non-Github repo in there.. C - REDIS @ https://github.com/antirez/redis - Postgresql @ http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=tree;f=src;hb=HEAD Java - Spring Framework @ https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-framework - Guava @ https://github.com/google/guava Javascript - ui-grid @ https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-grid
- Bahamut 10y ago
  Can't say I agree personally on UI Grid - it's a bit of a mess in some ways, especially in its distribution. It is also a bit of a configuration nightmare. For high quality JS, I would look to some of the major frameworks out there: https://github.com/facebook/react https://github.com/facebook/react https://github.com/angular/angular.js https://github.com/angular/angular.js https://github.com/angular/angular https://github.com/angular/angular There is a lot one can learn about software design by reading the source code of major libraries, and is far more reliable than any third party library in the ecosystem.
  - michaelchisari 10y ago
    A smaller, more accessible project would be Mithril, very nice, clean code. I haven't looked at the v0.2 code yet, but I can't imagine it deviates much from the quality of v0.1. https://github.com/lhorie/mithril https://github.com/lhorie/mithril
- modeless 10y ago
  Spring Framework!?! Really? If you fetishize abstraction, maybe: http://docs.spring.io/autorepo/docs/spring/2.5.x/api/org/springframework/aop/framework/AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBean.html http://docs.spring.io/autorepo/docs/spring/2.5.x/api/org/spr... To me the Spring Framework represents everything wrong with the Java way of doing things.
notatoad 10y ago
https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado is one of my favourites. Not a huge number of comments, but in terms of "self-documenting" code it's great.
- hp 10y ago
  Seconded, it's a clean well-documented API with an implementation that's easy to read.
jpetitto 10y ago
Any of the popular Square libraries are great examples, https://github.com/square https://github.com/square.
forgotpwtomain 10y ago
This isn't a github repo - but I think it's an excellent resource and worth mentioning here: The Architecture of Open Source Applications (http://aosabook.org/en/index.html http://aosabook.org/en/index.html) edit: I don't see why this is down-voted, the OP asked about examples of high-quality code, structure and design are also a large part of this and it's not hard to find the github-repo for any particular application mentioned in the above book. Furthermore a lot of examples of excellent code are not necessarily easy to approach with the 'open some random files and start reading approach', having a high level overview often helps.
- cheez 10y ago
  This is an excellent book, but the funny thing is that it only says "what is" and not "why". It took me years of experience and pain to figure out "why".
  - aryamaan 10y ago
    Could you share some resources where "why" is also discussed.
    - cheez 10y ago
      Blood, sweat and tears are the only resources I have to offer...
hlieberman 10y ago
https://github.com/erlang/otp https://github.com/erlang/otp is one of the best examples I can think of. It's reliability focused engineering from a major engineering firm.
- zorbash 10y ago
  I was hoping that i'd agree but check the code for Mnesia for example: https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/maint/lib/mnesia/src/mnesia.erl#L1865 https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/maint/lib/mnesia/src/mnes... Numerous functions missing essential code documentation all spread in a single file, with commented out code committed in git.
- technion 10y ago
  I really wish there was a way around #ifdef VXWORKS It really makes parts of that codebase dreadfully hard to reason with imo, but at the same time, I appreciate you either do exactly what they did, or you don't support the platform.
adamkochanowicz 10y ago
I'm surprised no one has mentioned https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap Maybe because it's getting a bad wrap these days with people doing dumb, repetitive things with it. But I've always found the code quality to be very good.
RobertKerans 10y ago
For JavaScript, Underscore is very good in terms of clean readability. LoDash is a better library, functionality-wise, but seems to have lost the quality somewhat. Backbone and the Coffeescript compiler are also good; jashkenas & the contributors did a good job trying to put literary programming techniques to use, IMO. The Elixir source code is very high quality; same applies to the Ecto library. Elixir code in general, because of the focus on including detailed documentation (including doctests) within the code, tends to be very readable. The way the REPL is set up means the docs for modules or functions can be accessed at any point, so it's good for pragmatic reasons.
- alehander42 10y ago
  +1 for Elixir, it was very easy to dive in the codebase and to start contributing even for somebody with limited Elixir/Erlang exp
  - RobertKerans 10y ago
    Yeah, I've found it the best experience I've ever had with a language in terms of ramping up from zero, and the focus on clean, readable code with documentation built in is a major part of that. Caveat: came from Ruby, so the syntax was very friendly. But I'd say as an aside that it's the first programming language I've experienced, (coming via a helluva lot of functional JS) that's both functional and completely pragmatic in terms of focussing on what's useful and necessary. Really impressive.
- baby 10y ago
  https://github.com/jashkenas/underscore/blob/master/underscore.js https://github.com/jashkenas/underscore/blob/master/undersco...
  - RobertKerans 10y ago
    Thanks, have crap WiFi ATM and can't get online for more than a few minutes at a time, I'll add the rest of the links once I'm back in the UK
eulji 10y ago
I would like to see people commenting about why they think that the project they recommend has a high quality code. Otherwise it's too subjective.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
elliotec 10y ago
https://github.com/thoughtbot https://github.com/thoughtbot
tekacs 10y ago
The Go standard library is throughly documented and implements all sorts of functionality (HTTP, crypto, libc-esque functionality) in a fairly minimal way: https://github.com/golang/go https://github.com/golang/go
- pella 10y ago
  after gofmt -> "Automatic source code formatting is becoming a requirement for any kind of language." https://talks.golang.org/2015/gofmt-en.slide https://talks.golang.org/2015/gofmt-en.slide ("The Cultural Evolution of gofmt) (2015) "Evolution in programming culture: -gofmt is significant selling point for Go -Insight is spreading that uniform "good enough" formatting is hugely beneficial. -Source code manipulation at AST-level enables a new category of tools. -Others are taking note: Programming culture is slowly evolving. "
  - arthurcolle 10y ago
    That talk is impossible to read on mobile (Safari, iOS 9 something)
    - 0942v8653 10y ago
      Use the second bookmarklet from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414599 It will zoom out the slides and make them readable. Weird how that is necessary.
- edgyswingset 10y ago
  The APIs that you as the programmer are supposed to invoke tend to be well-documented and fairly well-designed. But there's some parts in there I certainly wouldn't call elegant. For example, if you trace function calls from http.Get() you end up in a lovely function called doFollowingRedirects()[0] which is where the actual request is made inside of a for {} loop. Be it efficiency, some stylistic tendency I'm unaware of, or some contrived excuse that doesn't make any sense, at the end of the day I'm not likely to look for a function called doFollowingRedirects when I want to see where the initial (and likely only) request is made. [0]: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/net/http/client.go#L430 https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/net/http/client...
myko 10y ago
https://github.com/ReactiveCocoa/ReactiveCocoa https://github.com/ReactiveCocoa/ReactiveCocoa IMO very well written and very well run project. I follow most issues closely just because the discussions re: code reviews, new features, and community questions.
- afro88 10y ago
  And a very nicely written and architected example project: https://github.com/richeterre/SwiftGoal https://github.com/richeterre/SwiftGoal ReactiveCocoa 4, Swift 2.2, MVVM architected, full test suite.
berfarah 10y ago
Hanami has really good code quality: it's really easy to understand from a newcomer's perspective and is full of examples: https://github.com/hanami https://github.com/hanami
elviejo 10y ago
yegor from yegor256.com Did an award in 2015[0] for good quality software projects. I think his evaluation points are sensible: "Each project must be: * Open source (in GitHub). * At least 5,000 lines of code. * At least one year old. * Object-oriented (that's the only thing I understand). The best projects will feature (more about it): * Strict and visible principles of design. * Continuous delivery. * Traceability of changes. * Self-documented source code. * Strict rules of code formatting. What doesn't matter: * Popularity. * Programming language. * Buzz and trends. " In the end there 158 submissions, 12 finalist and 1 winner. Check them out. http://www.yegor256.com/2015/04/16/award.html http://www.yegor256.com/2015/04/16/award.html
- franciscop 10y ago
  TL;DR (the article) this is the winner: - https://github.com/suseika/inflectible https://github.com/suseika/inflectible
- pacala 10y ago
  Some caution around yegor's list. One of the criteria is "avoid -er anti-pattern", which links to http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/09/objects-end-with-er.html http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/09/objects-end-with-er.html. I'll just quote a little gem: > Let's get back to class names. When you add the "-er" suffix to your class name, you're immediately turning it into a dumb imperative executor of your will. You do not allow it to think and improvise. You expect it to do exactly what you want — sort, manage, control, print, write, combine, concatenate, etc. For the curious, the conundrum can be trivially solved via ```apples.min```, or perhaps ```Collections.min(apples)``` in a noun-biased language.
sairamkunala 10y ago
Spree has followed very good standards - https://github.com/spree/spree https://github.com/spree/spree Language: Ruby Framwork: Rails
franciscop 10y ago
I'm going to propose one of my own[1], since I can do few projects without time limit (for fun) so I did my best to properly program, test and document it. I overcommented on the past but I'm trying to correct it now. Also, all of the new contributors follow the same style so things stay consistent. As an example, let's try to understand the function `.addClass`: - Just to use it you can see the documentation on the website[2], which is the first contact normally. - Then when you try to find the relevant files. They are in github's `src/plugins/addclass`, a name that is common and intuitive [3]. - Not only that, but you also got the documentation in that folder in github thanks to the name `readme.md`. - When opening it [4], the first thing that you note is that the function has a tiny footprint; 8 lines. A brief explanation of what it does and a line explaining what the not-so-intuitive function `this.eacharg()` means. - Then we use the native `Element.classList` [5] to add classes. Most people familiar with vanilla javascript know it, but otherwise the name is quite descriptive `el.classList.add(name)` In contrast, while covering quite few other edge cases and older browsers, check jQuery's `.addClass()` code [6]. Or check Zepto.js' `addClass()` code [7] [1] http://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/ http://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/ [2] http://umbrellajs.com/documentation#addclass http://umbrellajs.com/documentation#addclass [3] https://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/tree/master/src/plugins/addclass https://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/tree/master/src/plugi... [4] https://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/blob/master/src/plugins/addclass/addclass.js https://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/blob/master/src/plugi... [5] https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/API/Element/classList https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/API/Element/classL... [6] https://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/305f193aa57014dc7d8fa0739a3fefd47166cd44/src/attributes/classes.js#L17 https://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/305f193aa57014dc7d8fa0... [7] https://github.com/madrobby/zepto/blob/601372ac4e3f98d502c707bf841589fbc48a3a7d/src/zepto.js#L732 https://github.com/madrobby/zepto/blob/601372ac4e3f98d502c70...
finishingmove 10y ago
Question to C programmers: Every time I encounter some C code, it doesn't take long until the obscurely short variable names start popping up from all directions. Is naming variables in this manner considered acceptable by today's "C best practices" or what's the deal with that?
- throwaway_exer 10y ago
  K&R used short variable names, and C programmers are proud not be programming in Java, which encourages longer names. I personally think the variable name length should match the scope size, bu then I'm reasonable like that.
  - shermanyo 10y ago
    > the variable name length should match the scope size Perfect summation, matches my thoughts.
- csl 10y ago
  Well, as long as the functions are short and the name is descriptive, I always use short names when the meaning is clear. For example strlower, you don't need more than `s` as the parameter name. It will probably be short, so using `len` or even just `l` for the string length should be fine for a ~15 line function. A tip is to look at the function declaration in the header files. There I, at least, use somewhat longer parameter names for descriptive purposes (along with documentation) but usually use short ones in the function bodies. So, if your functions are short and to the point (low coupling, high cohesion, in Coding Complete parlance), then I consider short parameter and variable names a good style. But it's just one ingredient in good code. Unless you're looking at competitive programming, I feel the best programmers make clear code with short names.
- kzhahou 10y ago
  Strangely, golang adopted this practice of very short variable names. Surprising since golang is so focused on clarity and readability.
cjcenizal 10y ago
https://github.com/smaato/ui-framework https://github.com/smaato/ui-framework UI Framework built with React and SCSS. The components are nicely modularized, have unit tests, and we put a lot of emphasis on code readability, clear names for things, a scalable folder structure, and intuitive interfaces.
vonnik 10y ago
I'm partial, because I work on these: Deeplearning for Java https://github.com/deeplearning4j/deeplearning4j https://github.com/deeplearning4j/deeplearning4j Scientific Computing for Java with n-dimensional arrays https://github.com/deeplearning4j/nd4j https://github.com/deeplearning4j/nd4j The C++ lib that makes it fast https://github.com/deeplearning4j/libnd4j https://github.com/deeplearning4j/libnd4j
daurnimator 10y ago
I was once searching for a "good" example of a code repository, but was unable to find one I couldn't fault. In response, I put the effort in for my smallest project to make it as high quality as possible: https://github.com/daurnimator/fifo.lua https://github.com/daurnimator/fifo.lua It's probably not much help to you unless you're working with lua; but... you did say any language :)
dchest 10y ago
https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped
if_by_whisky 10y ago
Flask, which (for those that don't know) is a popular Python web framework. https://github.com/pallets/flask https://github.com/pallets/flask I consider it well written. I never dive into flask and come out confused or disappointed.
robuon619 10y ago
The LMAX Disruptor is well-documented, fast, and arguably simple considering what it offers: https://github.com/LMAX-Exchange/disruptor https://github.com/LMAX-Exchange/disruptor
- ruraljuror 10y ago
  There are a couple of good episodes of software engineering radio to go along with this codebase.
TheAceOfHearts 10y ago
lodash is great and heavily documented. [0] https://github.com/lodash/lodash/ https://github.com/lodash/lodash/
jtolmar 10y ago
Pokemon Showdown's code quality impressed me when I looked at it: https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown It's not literally flawless (hard to find conceptual entry points, short on comments), but when you get to the massive piles of one-off special functions needed to simulate all of Pokemon's moves and abilities (e.g. https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown/blob/master/data/abilities.js https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown/blob/master/data/a... ) it's all much more succinct than I'd have expected. The file I linked expresses more "business logic" in 3300 lines than is contained in the entire 40kiloline codebases of some of the enterprise monstrosities I've worked on.
- partycoder 10y ago
  Code organization could use some work. A lot of shared mutable state. Event listeners are subscribed with "on" instead of "once" for one time events... that's all I could find in like 30 seconds... Disqualified
  - jack9 10y ago
    High Code Quality is not synonymous with perfect. Your critique is disqualified.
raphaelsaunier 10y ago
The Laravel framework [1]. It makes the most of the latest features available in PHP (reflection, traits, namespacing, etc.) and its author, Taylor Otwell, has an almost obsessive attitude with the naming of methods and formatting of the source code. For instance, every multiline comment is exactly three lines long, and every line is three characters shorter than the previous one [2]. [1] https://github.com/laravel/framework https://github.com/laravel/framework [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/laravel/comments/20ovey/just_noticed_this_its_like_this_in_every_config/cg5w2x6 https://www.reddit.com/r/laravel/comments/20ovey/just_notice...
- raziel2p 10y ago
  Laravel is a pretty bad codebase, making use of reflection or just assuming methods are present instead of interfaces, actively laughing in the face of static typing. They're also awful at managing issues/bugs, where they'll gladly close issues without explanation, or close an issue when a pull request gets submitted, only to reject the pull request and not re-open the issue.
  - raphaelsaunier 10y ago
    Fair enough, you seem to have contributed quite a bit to the framework after all [1]. However, don't you think they have gotten better with triaging as of late? Also, I'm wondering, does your criticism still apply to the latest versions of Laravel or does it stem from frustrations with the pre-5.0 versions? Regarding your comments about the lack of interfaces, it's worth mentioning that at least the core components do have an interface now [2]. [1] https://github.com/laravel/framework/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Apr+author%3Aanlutro https://github.com/laravel/framework/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=... [2] https://laravel.com/docs/master/contracts#contract-reference https://laravel.com/docs/master/contracts#contract-reference
- noir_lord 10y ago
  Posted laravel then saw your comment, I agree it is one of the cleanest PHP codebases out there. Also good is https://github.com/symfony/symfony/tree/master/src/Symfony/Component https://github.com/symfony/symfony/tree/master/src/Symfony/C...
troika 10y ago
Both the deepstream.io server https://github.com/deepstreamIO/deepstream.io https://github.com/deepstreamIO/deepstream.io And node client https://github.com/deepstreamIO/deepstream.io-client-js https://github.com/deepstreamIO/deepstream.io-client-js are examples for a very clean, "no nonsense" style of writing JavaScript
- partycoder 10y ago
  Uses JSDoc, and the code is well structured. But it has lots of statefulness, some of the state is structured as a finite state machines in ways that are easy to break (similar to the "request" module, also a FSM that is incredible easy to break). Function parameters are not validated.
  - gbrits 10y ago
    What do you mean by breaking the fsm? Isn't the whole point of having a fsm to explicitly describe the entire app-state? Honest question
    - partycoder 10y ago
      A state machine has states and transitions. Some transitions are valid, others are not. Therefore when you implement a state machine in code the consequence is sequential coupling. Imagine a car class: You have StartCar(), Accelerate(), Break(), StopCar(), SwitchGear(). Can you accelerate with your car turned off? no. Can you stop your car twice? No. So there should be validations in state transitions. Since in this code those are missing, it's possible to arrive to invalid states that can cause undesired behavior. In the "request" npm module (an ambiguous module name that wastes a lot of my time in a regular basis), you can abort a request that has not started. That causes an exception. It took me a lot of time to find it. It was all because of a broken state machine.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
personjerry 10y ago
Nethack's repository is pretty great, especially considering how old it is and that it is in C. https://github.com/Vanilla-NetHack/NetHack/tree/master/src https://github.com/Vanilla-NetHack/NetHack/tree/master/src
- akx 10y ago
  I... is that sarcasm? NetHack's code is a tangled mess of K&R C.
  - riffraff 10y ago
    indeed it seems it's often a sea of nested if's and switch's with occasional #ifdef's e.g. https://github.com/Vanilla-NetHack/NetHack/blob/master/src/apply.c#L277 https://github.com/Vanilla-NetHack/NetHack/blob/master/src/a... I think this is a reasonable way to handle the tons of special cases in nethack's gameplay, but not really "inspiring".
hthh 10y ago
"High quality" is an strange concept. I would look at code you actually use and rely on - that's the best indication of quality. A lot of critical code deals with inelegant, complex problems correctly and efficiently - I'd consider anything that can be relied on to manage that "high quality", even if it is unclean, inelegant, poorly formatted and algorithmically mundane. That said, if you want to read elegant code, I'd recommend the stb parser libraries (written in C). They are small self-contained decoders for many common media formats, with excellent documentation: https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_image.h https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_image.h https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_truetype.h https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_truetype.h https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_vorbis.c https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_vorbis.c These libraries are likely insecure, handle many edge-cases incorrectly, implement fewer features, and perform worse than other options. However, they meet your criteria better.
- sklogic 10y ago
  It is not nearly enough for a code to just work and be useful. Code quality is what determines how maintainable it is, how long will it stay relevant, how long will it survive the changing requirements and environment. And it is much harder to get this than just something that (sometimes) work.
  - hthh 10y ago
    Absolutely, by all means look at old code - code that has survived and been useful for a long time. It's either adaptable (Linux) or doesn't need to change or adapt much (TeX). Do you currently use and rely on software which you expect won't be useful to you in ten years time? I can't think of much personally. (I do use IDA Pro, which has clearly adapted poorly to changing requirements - it still has scars of the 32-bit to 64-bit transition that get in the way of day-to-day usage. I hope there'll be something better in ten years. Of course, I could buy a cheaper, "higher quality" tool instead, but none of them are as powerful or as useful.)
lambdafunc 10y ago
Presto has great source code too, check it out: http://github.com/prestodb/presto http://github.com/prestodb/presto
sklogic 10y ago
The threshold of what the high code quality is was set long ago and remains far beyond the reach of the mere mortals. You will hardly find anything even distantly approaching the quality of TeX and Metafont. Not sure if there are mirrors on github, but you can always grab a copy from CTAN.
vjdhama 10y ago
crystal-lang's standard library is a good example. https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal
estreeper 10y ago
I've really enjoyed looking at the GraphQL JavaScript reference implementation source [1]. It is well-commented, consistently formatted and structured, and makes frequent references to the spec. The spec itself [2] is very well written too, and I think the project being spec-driven along with the code quality make it a good example. It feels like a lot of thought was put in to making the code well-documented and easy to follow for people new to the project. [1] https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js [2] https://facebook.github.io/graphql/ https://facebook.github.io/graphql/
zerosign 10y ago
I'm a bit surprise that no one actually mention rust programming language codebase. https://github.com/rust-lang/rust https://github.com/rust-lang/rust
- Manishearth 10y ago
  I'll note that while the code quality in Rust is pretty good (clean/usually commented/well formatted/tested), it's not exactly idiomatic Rust. This is because Rust as a language has changed a lot, and the compiler still has old code that was written the "old way" and not updated to use better or more idiomatic alternatives (e.g. elision, if let, etc). Servo is in a similar situation. This is slowly improving as we run clippy on Rust and in occasional manual refactorings (for example when sty was renamed to TypeVariants and ty_foo was renamed to TyFoo to be have the correct capitalization -- the old capitalization was years old), but there still is work to do to make it completely idiomatic. So if you want to learn how to write idiomatic Rust, I would avoid using the Rust repo as a source. Newer repos and new code in the Rust repo is pretty okay, though.
bluetomcat 10y ago
The Quaint programming language: https://github.com/bbu/quaint-lang https://github.com/bbu/quaint-lang I think the strengths of the C code are: straightforward algorithms without many nonsensical abstraction layers, consistent and clean formatting, sane usage of the preprocessor.
hath995 10y ago
https://github.com/hapijs/hapi https://github.com/hapijs/hapi
partycoder 10y ago
Id Software's Doom 3: https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-3 https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-3
- iso-8859-1 10y ago
  Isn't game code notorious for being hastily finished?
killercup 10y ago
This is beautiful: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/regex/blob/master/src/dfa.rs https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/regex/blob/master/src/d...
noir_lord 10y ago
https://github.com/laravel/framework/tree/5.2/src/Illuminate https://github.com/laravel/framework/tree/5.2/src/Illuminate It's one of the highest quality and cleanest PHP codebases I've ever seen. PS: Please pipe all the unflattering comments about PHP to /dev/null, heard them all before.
JimRoepcke 10y ago
https://github.com/yapstudios/YapDatabase https://github.com/yapstudios/YapDatabase Great code, docs and support.
doubleagent 10y ago
Ring is pretty special. https://github.com/ring-clojure/ring https://github.com/ring-clojure/ring
bobwaycott 10y ago
Elixir and Phoenix
pmarin 10y ago
NetBSD https://github.com/IIJ-NetBSD/netbsd-src https://github.com/IIJ-NetBSD/netbsd-src
iurisilvio 10y ago
Any Python code from Armin Ronacher (https://github.com/mitsuhiko https://github.com/mitsuhiko) or Kenneth Reitz (https://github.com/kennethreitz https://github.com/kennethreitz). They have really clean code, popular packages and are open about their decisions. It is interesting to understand their design thinking.
devcheese 10y ago
https://github.com/stripe/stripe-go https://github.com/stripe/stripe-go

147 points by baccheion 10y ago

The language doesn't really matter. I'm trying to see examples of what people consider high quality code (clean, elegant, well-formatted, algorithmically beautiful, etc).

roschdal 10y ago

https://github.com/torvalds/linux https://github.com/torvalds/linux

loosescrews 10y ago
Have you actually ever read any of the Linux source code? I find it pretty hard to read to be honest. There are barely any comments and the ones that are there are often not very helpful.
- yzh 10y ago
  I highly recommend this gitbook to you: https://0xax.gitbooks.io/linux-insides/content/index.html https://0xax.gitbooks.io/linux-insides/content/index.html
  - ewjordan 10y ago
    "Read the docs" is not an excuse for incomprehensible source code. If links to documentation are not in the code, they might as well be nonexistent. In this case, I've never read the sources, so I have no idea if the complaint is valid.
    - simoncion 10y ago
      > If links to documentation are not in the code, they might as well be nonexistent. Yeesh. I must either be getting old, or everyone is significantly more busy than I am. I find that I always have time to at least locate any official documentation for the thing that I'm working with.
- eps 10y ago
  I worked with several Linux parts extensively and the code is really good in terms of readability, flow and overall layout.
zbuf 10y ago
You'd have to explain to me what you think makes the Linux code of particularly high quality; I don't think it's a good fit for the criteria in the question. Whilst it may well well engineered as a project of this size, the code I have seen leaves a lot to be desired. Cases that spring to mind are the mm code and cgroups where, as an outsider, I got the impression of a large codebase where the patch delta is kept to a minimum -- perhaps so as not to introduce new bugs as features are added. But this doesn't necessarily mean the resulting code has a logical structure or layering; it means deciphering it involves as much studying of the Git history as it does of the (sparsely commented) code on the screen. In contrast, my experiences in the FreeBSD code have been much better, with less spaghetti and even to the point of maintained man pages for key internal functions.

phaas 10y ago

Here's a couple of projects that I've been personally impressed with. I hope you don't mind a non-Github repo in there.. C - REDIS @ https://github.com/antirez/redis - Postgresql @ http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=tree;f=src;hb=HEAD Java - Spring Framework @ https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-framework - Guava @ https://github.com/google/guava Javascript - ui-grid @ https://github.com/angular-ui/ui-grid

Bahamut 10y ago
Can't say I agree personally on UI Grid - it's a bit of a mess in some ways, especially in its distribution. It is also a bit of a configuration nightmare. For high quality JS, I would look to some of the major frameworks out there: https://github.com/facebook/react https://github.com/facebook/react https://github.com/angular/angular.js https://github.com/angular/angular.js https://github.com/angular/angular https://github.com/angular/angular There is a lot one can learn about software design by reading the source code of major libraries, and is far more reliable than any third party library in the ecosystem.
- michaelchisari 10y ago
  A smaller, more accessible project would be Mithril, very nice, clean code. I haven't looked at the v0.2 code yet, but I can't imagine it deviates much from the quality of v0.1. https://github.com/lhorie/mithril https://github.com/lhorie/mithril
modeless 10y ago
Spring Framework!?! Really? If you fetishize abstraction, maybe: http://docs.spring.io/autorepo/docs/spring/2.5.x/api/org/springframework/aop/framework/AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBean.html http://docs.spring.io/autorepo/docs/spring/2.5.x/api/org/spr... To me the Spring Framework represents everything wrong with the Java way of doing things.

notatoad 10y ago

https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado https://github.com/tornadoweb/tornado is one of my favourites. Not a huge number of comments, but in terms of "self-documenting" code it's great.

hp 10y ago
Seconded, it's a clean well-documented API with an implementation that's easy to read.

jpetitto 10y ago

Any of the popular Square libraries are great examples, https://github.com/square https://github.com/square.

forgotpwtomain 10y ago

This isn't a github repo - but I think it's an excellent resource and worth mentioning here: The Architecture of Open Source Applications (http://aosabook.org/en/index.html http://aosabook.org/en/index.html) edit: I don't see why this is down-voted, the OP asked about examples of high-quality code, structure and design are also a large part of this and it's not hard to find the github-repo for any particular application mentioned in the above book. Furthermore a lot of examples of excellent code are not necessarily easy to approach with the 'open some random files and start reading approach', having a high level overview often helps.

cheez 10y ago
This is an excellent book, but the funny thing is that it only says "what is" and not "why". It took me years of experience and pain to figure out "why".
- aryamaan 10y ago
  Could you share some resources where "why" is also discussed.
  - cheez 10y ago
    Blood, sweat and tears are the only resources I have to offer...

hlieberman 10y ago

https://github.com/erlang/otp https://github.com/erlang/otp is one of the best examples I can think of. It's reliability focused engineering from a major engineering firm.

zorbash 10y ago
I was hoping that i'd agree but check the code for Mnesia for example: https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/maint/lib/mnesia/src/mnesia.erl#L1865 https://github.com/erlang/otp/blob/maint/lib/mnesia/src/mnes... Numerous functions missing essential code documentation all spread in a single file, with commented out code committed in git.
technion 10y ago
I really wish there was a way around #ifdef VXWORKS It really makes parts of that codebase dreadfully hard to reason with imo, but at the same time, I appreciate you either do exactly what they did, or you don't support the platform.

adamkochanowicz 10y ago

I'm surprised no one has mentioned https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap Maybe because it's getting a bad wrap these days with people doing dumb, repetitive things with it. But I've always found the code quality to be very good.

RobertKerans 10y ago

For JavaScript, Underscore is very good in terms of clean readability. LoDash is a better library, functionality-wise, but seems to have lost the quality somewhat. Backbone and the Coffeescript compiler are also good; jashkenas & the contributors did a good job trying to put literary programming techniques to use, IMO. The Elixir source code is very high quality; same applies to the Ecto library. Elixir code in general, because of the focus on including detailed documentation (including doctests) within the code, tends to be very readable. The way the REPL is set up means the docs for modules or functions can be accessed at any point, so it's good for pragmatic reasons.

alehander42 10y ago
+1 for Elixir, it was very easy to dive in the codebase and to start contributing even for somebody with limited Elixir/Erlang exp
- RobertKerans 10y ago
  Yeah, I've found it the best experience I've ever had with a language in terms of ramping up from zero, and the focus on clean, readable code with documentation built in is a major part of that. Caveat: came from Ruby, so the syntax was very friendly. But I'd say as an aside that it's the first programming language I've experienced, (coming via a helluva lot of functional JS) that's both functional and completely pragmatic in terms of focussing on what's useful and necessary. Really impressive.
baby 10y ago
https://github.com/jashkenas/underscore/blob/master/underscore.js https://github.com/jashkenas/underscore/blob/master/undersco...
- RobertKerans 10y ago
  Thanks, have crap WiFi ATM and can't get online for more than a few minutes at a time, I'll add the rest of the links once I'm back in the UK

eulji 10y ago

I would like to see people commenting about why they think that the project they recommend has a high quality code. Otherwise it's too subjective.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

elliotec 10y ago

https://github.com/thoughtbot https://github.com/thoughtbot

tekacs 10y ago

The Go standard library is throughly documented and implements all sorts of functionality (HTTP, crypto, libc-esque functionality) in a fairly minimal way: https://github.com/golang/go https://github.com/golang/go

pella 10y ago
after gofmt -> "Automatic source code formatting is becoming a requirement for any kind of language." https://talks.golang.org/2015/gofmt-en.slide https://talks.golang.org/2015/gofmt-en.slide ("The Cultural Evolution of gofmt) (2015) "Evolution in programming culture: -gofmt is significant selling point for Go -Insight is spreading that uniform "good enough" formatting is hugely beneficial. -Source code manipulation at AST-level enables a new category of tools. -Others are taking note: Programming culture is slowly evolving. "
- arthurcolle 10y ago
  That talk is impossible to read on mobile (Safari, iOS 9 something)
  - 0942v8653 10y ago
    Use the second bookmarklet from here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9414599 It will zoom out the slides and make them readable. Weird how that is necessary.
edgyswingset 10y ago
The APIs that you as the programmer are supposed to invoke tend to be well-documented and fairly well-designed. But there's some parts in there I certainly wouldn't call elegant. For example, if you trace function calls from http.Get() you end up in a lovely function called doFollowingRedirects()[0] which is where the actual request is made inside of a for {} loop. Be it efficiency, some stylistic tendency I'm unaware of, or some contrived excuse that doesn't make any sense, at the end of the day I'm not likely to look for a function called doFollowingRedirects when I want to see where the initial (and likely only) request is made. [0]: https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/net/http/client.go#L430 https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/net/http/client...

myko 10y ago

https://github.com/ReactiveCocoa/ReactiveCocoa https://github.com/ReactiveCocoa/ReactiveCocoa IMO very well written and very well run project. I follow most issues closely just because the discussions re: code reviews, new features, and community questions.

afro88 10y ago
And a very nicely written and architected example project: https://github.com/richeterre/SwiftGoal https://github.com/richeterre/SwiftGoal ReactiveCocoa 4, Swift 2.2, MVVM architected, full test suite.

berfarah 10y ago

Hanami has really good code quality: it's really easy to understand from a newcomer's perspective and is full of examples: https://github.com/hanami https://github.com/hanami

elviejo 10y ago

yegor from yegor256.com Did an award in 2015[0] for good quality software projects. I think his evaluation points are sensible: "Each project must be: * Open source (in GitHub). * At least 5,000 lines of code. * At least one year old. * Object-oriented (that's the only thing I understand). The best projects will feature (more about it): * Strict and visible principles of design. * Continuous delivery. * Traceability of changes. * Self-documented source code. * Strict rules of code formatting. What doesn't matter: * Popularity. * Programming language. * Buzz and trends. " In the end there 158 submissions, 12 finalist and 1 winner. Check them out. http://www.yegor256.com/2015/04/16/award.html http://www.yegor256.com/2015/04/16/award.html

franciscop 10y ago
TL;DR (the article) this is the winner: - https://github.com/suseika/inflectible https://github.com/suseika/inflectible
pacala 10y ago
Some caution around yegor's list. One of the criteria is "avoid -er anti-pattern", which links to http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/09/objects-end-with-er.html http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/09/objects-end-with-er.html. I'll just quote a little gem: > Let's get back to class names. When you add the "-er" suffix to your class name, you're immediately turning it into a dumb imperative executor of your will. You do not allow it to think and improvise. You expect it to do exactly what you want — sort, manage, control, print, write, combine, concatenate, etc. For the curious, the conundrum can be trivially solved via ```apples.min```, or perhaps ```Collections.min(apples)``` in a noun-biased language.

sairamkunala 10y ago

Spree has followed very good standards - https://github.com/spree/spree https://github.com/spree/spree Language: Ruby Framwork: Rails

franciscop 10y ago

I'm going to propose one of my own[1], since I can do few projects without time limit (for fun) so I did my best to properly program, test and document it. I overcommented on the past but I'm trying to correct it now. Also, all of the new contributors follow the same style so things stay consistent. As an example, let's try to understand the function `.addClass`: - Just to use it you can see the documentation on the website[2], which is the first contact normally. - Then when you try to find the relevant files. They are in github's `src/plugins/addclass`, a name that is common and intuitive [3]. - Not only that, but you also got the documentation in that folder in github thanks to the name `readme.md`. - When opening it [4], the first thing that you note is that the function has a tiny footprint; 8 lines. A brief explanation of what it does and a line explaining what the not-so-intuitive function `this.eacharg()` means. - Then we use the native `Element.classList` [5] to add classes. Most people familiar with vanilla javascript know it, but otherwise the name is quite descriptive `el.classList.add(name)` In contrast, while covering quite few other edge cases and older browsers, check jQuery's `.addClass()` code [6]. Or check Zepto.js' `addClass()` code [7] [1] http://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/ http://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/ [2] http://umbrellajs.com/documentation#addclass http://umbrellajs.com/documentation#addclass [3] https://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/tree/master/src/plugins/addclass https://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/tree/master/src/plugi... [4] https://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/blob/master/src/plugins/addclass/addclass.js https://github.com/umbrellajs/umbrella/blob/master/src/plugi... [5] https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/API/Element/classList https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/API/Element/classL... [6] https://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/305f193aa57014dc7d8fa0739a3fefd47166cd44/src/attributes/classes.js#L17 https://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/305f193aa57014dc7d8fa0... [7] https://github.com/madrobby/zepto/blob/601372ac4e3f98d502c707bf841589fbc48a3a7d/src/zepto.js#L732 https://github.com/madrobby/zepto/blob/601372ac4e3f98d502c70...

finishingmove 10y ago

Question to C programmers: Every time I encounter some C code, it doesn't take long until the obscurely short variable names start popping up from all directions. Is naming variables in this manner considered acceptable by today's "C best practices" or what's the deal with that?

throwaway_exer 10y ago
K&R used short variable names, and C programmers are proud not be programming in Java, which encourages longer names. I personally think the variable name length should match the scope size, bu then I'm reasonable like that.
- shermanyo 10y ago
  > the variable name length should match the scope size Perfect summation, matches my thoughts.
csl 10y ago
Well, as long as the functions are short and the name is descriptive, I always use short names when the meaning is clear. For example strlower, you don't need more than `s` as the parameter name. It will probably be short, so using `len` or even just `l` for the string length should be fine for a ~15 line function. A tip is to look at the function declaration in the header files. There I, at least, use somewhat longer parameter names for descriptive purposes (along with documentation) but usually use short ones in the function bodies. So, if your functions are short and to the point (low coupling, high cohesion, in Coding Complete parlance), then I consider short parameter and variable names a good style. But it's just one ingredient in good code. Unless you're looking at competitive programming, I feel the best programmers make clear code with short names.
kzhahou 10y ago
Strangely, golang adopted this practice of very short variable names. Surprising since golang is so focused on clarity and readability.

cjcenizal 10y ago

https://github.com/smaato/ui-framework https://github.com/smaato/ui-framework UI Framework built with React and SCSS. The components are nicely modularized, have unit tests, and we put a lot of emphasis on code readability, clear names for things, a scalable folder structure, and intuitive interfaces.

vonnik 10y ago

I'm partial, because I work on these: Deeplearning for Java https://github.com/deeplearning4j/deeplearning4j https://github.com/deeplearning4j/deeplearning4j Scientific Computing for Java with n-dimensional arrays https://github.com/deeplearning4j/nd4j https://github.com/deeplearning4j/nd4j The C++ lib that makes it fast https://github.com/deeplearning4j/libnd4j https://github.com/deeplearning4j/libnd4j

daurnimator 10y ago

I was once searching for a "good" example of a code repository, but was unable to find one I couldn't fault. In response, I put the effort in for my smallest project to make it as high quality as possible: https://github.com/daurnimator/fifo.lua https://github.com/daurnimator/fifo.lua It's probably not much help to you unless you're working with lua; but... you did say any language :)

dchest 10y ago

https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped https://github.com/Tarsnap/spiped

if_by_whisky 10y ago

Flask, which (for those that don't know) is a popular Python web framework. https://github.com/pallets/flask https://github.com/pallets/flask I consider it well written. I never dive into flask and come out confused or disappointed.

robuon619 10y ago

The LMAX Disruptor is well-documented, fast, and arguably simple considering what it offers: https://github.com/LMAX-Exchange/disruptor https://github.com/LMAX-Exchange/disruptor

ruraljuror 10y ago
There are a couple of good episodes of software engineering radio to go along with this codebase.

TheAceOfHearts 10y ago

lodash is great and heavily documented. [0] https://github.com/lodash/lodash/ https://github.com/lodash/lodash/

jtolmar 10y ago

Pokemon Showdown's code quality impressed me when I looked at it: https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown It's not literally flawless (hard to find conceptual entry points, short on comments), but when you get to the massive piles of one-off special functions needed to simulate all of Pokemon's moves and abilities (e.g. https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown/blob/master/data/abilities.js https://github.com/Zarel/Pokemon-Showdown/blob/master/data/a... ) it's all much more succinct than I'd have expected. The file I linked expresses more "business logic" in 3300 lines than is contained in the entire 40kiloline codebases of some of the enterprise monstrosities I've worked on.

partycoder 10y ago
Code organization could use some work. A lot of shared mutable state. Event listeners are subscribed with "on" instead of "once" for one time events... that's all I could find in like 30 seconds... Disqualified
- jack9 10y ago
  High Code Quality is not synonymous with perfect. Your critique is disqualified.

raphaelsaunier 10y ago

The Laravel framework [1]. It makes the most of the latest features available in PHP (reflection, traits, namespacing, etc.) and its author, Taylor Otwell, has an almost obsessive attitude with the naming of methods and formatting of the source code. For instance, every multiline comment is exactly three lines long, and every line is three characters shorter than the previous one [2]. [1] https://github.com/laravel/framework https://github.com/laravel/framework [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/laravel/comments/20ovey/just_noticed_this_its_like_this_in_every_config/cg5w2x6 https://www.reddit.com/r/laravel/comments/20ovey/just_notice...

raziel2p 10y ago
Laravel is a pretty bad codebase, making use of reflection or just assuming methods are present instead of interfaces, actively laughing in the face of static typing. They're also awful at managing issues/bugs, where they'll gladly close issues without explanation, or close an issue when a pull request gets submitted, only to reject the pull request and not re-open the issue.
- raphaelsaunier 10y ago
  Fair enough, you seem to have contributed quite a bit to the framework after all [1]. However, don't you think they have gotten better with triaging as of late? Also, I'm wondering, does your criticism still apply to the latest versions of Laravel or does it stem from frustrations with the pre-5.0 versions? Regarding your comments about the lack of interfaces, it's worth mentioning that at least the core components do have an interface now [2]. [1] https://github.com/laravel/framework/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Apr+author%3Aanlutro https://github.com/laravel/framework/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=... [2] https://laravel.com/docs/master/contracts#contract-reference https://laravel.com/docs/master/contracts#contract-reference
noir_lord 10y ago
Posted laravel then saw your comment, I agree it is one of the cleanest PHP codebases out there. Also good is https://github.com/symfony/symfony/tree/master/src/Symfony/Component https://github.com/symfony/symfony/tree/master/src/Symfony/C...

troika 10y ago

Both the deepstream.io server https://github.com/deepstreamIO/deepstream.io https://github.com/deepstreamIO/deepstream.io And node client https://github.com/deepstreamIO/deepstream.io-client-js https://github.com/deepstreamIO/deepstream.io-client-js are examples for a very clean, "no nonsense" style of writing JavaScript

partycoder 10y ago
Uses JSDoc, and the code is well structured. But it has lots of statefulness, some of the state is structured as a finite state machines in ways that are easy to break (similar to the "request" module, also a FSM that is incredible easy to break). Function parameters are not validated.
- gbrits 10y ago
  What do you mean by breaking the fsm? Isn't the whole point of having a fsm to explicitly describe the entire app-state? Honest question
  - partycoder 10y ago
    A state machine has states and transitions. Some transitions are valid, others are not. Therefore when you implement a state machine in code the consequence is sequential coupling. Imagine a car class: You have StartCar(), Accelerate(), Break(), StopCar(), SwitchGear(). Can you accelerate with your car turned off? no. Can you stop your car twice? No. So there should be validations in state transitions. Since in this code those are missing, it's possible to arrive to invalid states that can cause undesired behavior. In the "request" npm module (an ambiguous module name that wastes a lot of my time in a regular basis), you can abort a request that has not started. That causes an exception. It took me a lot of time to find it. It was all because of a broken state machine.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

personjerry 10y ago

Nethack's repository is pretty great, especially considering how old it is and that it is in C. https://github.com/Vanilla-NetHack/NetHack/tree/master/src https://github.com/Vanilla-NetHack/NetHack/tree/master/src

akx 10y ago
I... is that sarcasm? NetHack's code is a tangled mess of K&R C.
- riffraff 10y ago
  indeed it seems it's often a sea of nested if's and switch's with occasional #ifdef's e.g. https://github.com/Vanilla-NetHack/NetHack/blob/master/src/apply.c#L277 https://github.com/Vanilla-NetHack/NetHack/blob/master/src/a... I think this is a reasonable way to handle the tons of special cases in nethack's gameplay, but not really "inspiring".

hthh 10y ago

"High quality" is an strange concept. I would look at code you actually use and rely on - that's the best indication of quality. A lot of critical code deals with inelegant, complex problems correctly and efficiently - I'd consider anything that can be relied on to manage that "high quality", even if it is unclean, inelegant, poorly formatted and algorithmically mundane. That said, if you want to read elegant code, I'd recommend the stb parser libraries (written in C). They are small self-contained decoders for many common media formats, with excellent documentation: https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_image.h https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_image.h https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_truetype.h https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_truetype.h https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_vorbis.c https://github.com/nothings/stb/blob/master/stb_vorbis.c These libraries are likely insecure, handle many edge-cases incorrectly, implement fewer features, and perform worse than other options. However, they meet your criteria better.

sklogic 10y ago
It is not nearly enough for a code to just work and be useful. Code quality is what determines how maintainable it is, how long will it stay relevant, how long will it survive the changing requirements and environment. And it is much harder to get this than just something that (sometimes) work.
- hthh 10y ago
  Absolutely, by all means look at old code - code that has survived and been useful for a long time. It's either adaptable (Linux) or doesn't need to change or adapt much (TeX). Do you currently use and rely on software which you expect won't be useful to you in ten years time? I can't think of much personally. (I do use IDA Pro, which has clearly adapted poorly to changing requirements - it still has scars of the 32-bit to 64-bit transition that get in the way of day-to-day usage. I hope there'll be something better in ten years. Of course, I could buy a cheaper, "higher quality" tool instead, but none of them are as powerful or as useful.)

lambdafunc 10y ago

Presto has great source code too, check it out: http://github.com/prestodb/presto http://github.com/prestodb/presto

sklogic 10y ago

The threshold of what the high code quality is was set long ago and remains far beyond the reach of the mere mortals. You will hardly find anything even distantly approaching the quality of TeX and Metafont. Not sure if there are mirrors on github, but you can always grab a copy from CTAN.

vjdhama 10y ago

crystal-lang's standard library is a good example. https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal

estreeper 10y ago

I've really enjoyed looking at the GraphQL JavaScript reference implementation source [1]. It is well-commented, consistently formatted and structured, and makes frequent references to the spec. The spec itself [2] is very well written too, and I think the project being spec-driven along with the code quality make it a good example. It feels like a lot of thought was put in to making the code well-documented and easy to follow for people new to the project. [1] https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js [2] https://facebook.github.io/graphql/ https://facebook.github.io/graphql/

zerosign 10y ago

I'm a bit surprise that no one actually mention rust programming language codebase. https://github.com/rust-lang/rust https://github.com/rust-lang/rust

Manishearth 10y ago
I'll note that while the code quality in Rust is pretty good (clean/usually commented/well formatted/tested), it's not exactly idiomatic Rust. This is because Rust as a language has changed a lot, and the compiler still has old code that was written the "old way" and not updated to use better or more idiomatic alternatives (e.g. elision, if let, etc). Servo is in a similar situation. This is slowly improving as we run clippy on Rust and in occasional manual refactorings (for example when sty was renamed to TypeVariants and ty_foo was renamed to TyFoo to be have the correct capitalization -- the old capitalization was years old), but there still is work to do to make it completely idiomatic. So if you want to learn how to write idiomatic Rust, I would avoid using the Rust repo as a source. Newer repos and new code in the Rust repo is pretty okay, though.

bluetomcat 10y ago

The Quaint programming language: https://github.com/bbu/quaint-lang https://github.com/bbu/quaint-lang I think the strengths of the C code are: straightforward algorithms without many nonsensical abstraction layers, consistent and clean formatting, sane usage of the preprocessor.

hath995 10y ago

https://github.com/hapijs/hapi https://github.com/hapijs/hapi

partycoder 10y ago

Id Software's Doom 3: https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-3 https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-3

iso-8859-1 10y ago
Isn't game code notorious for being hastily finished?

killercup 10y ago

This is beautiful: https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/regex/blob/master/src/dfa.rs https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/regex/blob/master/src/d...

noir_lord 10y ago

https://github.com/laravel/framework/tree/5.2/src/Illuminate https://github.com/laravel/framework/tree/5.2/src/Illuminate It's one of the highest quality and cleanest PHP codebases I've ever seen. PS: Please pipe all the unflattering comments about PHP to /dev/null, heard them all before.

JimRoepcke 10y ago

https://github.com/yapstudios/YapDatabase https://github.com/yapstudios/YapDatabase Great code, docs and support.

doubleagent 10y ago

Ring is pretty special. https://github.com/ring-clojure/ring https://github.com/ring-clojure/ring

bobwaycott 10y ago

Elixir and Phoenix

pmarin 10y ago

NetBSD https://github.com/IIJ-NetBSD/netbsd-src https://github.com/IIJ-NetBSD/netbsd-src

iurisilvio 10y ago

Any Python code from Armin Ronacher (https://github.com/mitsuhiko https://github.com/mitsuhiko) or Kenneth Reitz (https://github.com/kennethreitz https://github.com/kennethreitz). They have really clean code, popular packages and are open about their decisions. It is interesting to understand their design thinking.

devcheese 10y ago

https://github.com/stripe/stripe-go https://github.com/stripe/stripe-go