16 ms·

Ask HN: What are some examples of good code?

• pvsukale3 10y ago
  https://github.com/discourse/discourse https://github.com/discourse/discourse
• panic 10y ago
  This thread from a few years ago is worth a look: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7602237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7602237
• PaulHoule 10y ago
  https://github.com/niklasso/minisat https://github.com/niklasso/minisat
• bmaeser 10y ago
  https://github.com/pallets/flask https://github.com/pallets/flask and https://github.com/kennethreitz/requests https://github.com/kennethreitz/requests both in python, but beautiful code, well structured and you would not need any docs, just read the code
  • notamy 10y ago
    Flask is absolutely beautiful; definitely agree with reading through it.
  • noufalibrahim 10y ago
    I don't want to take anything away from requests. It's an extremely useful library. However, I do a code walkthrough of various popular libraries with my students and I've never been satisfied with requests internals. The emphasis, I've felt, is more on clean, stable, public API rather than internal consistency and cleanliness. I don't pick it up these days for my classes. Instead, we usually go through the python standard library. Especially the code from Raymond Hettinger.
    • 2bitencryption 10y ago
      that sounds like a class I would love to take. any suggestions on what in the standard library to check out?
      • noufalibrahim 10y ago
        We usually do collections. Especially the implementation of the OrderedDict. It's a nice combination of compromises, careful coding and usefulness. I used to do requests but like I said, moved away. I sometimes do pygments to discuss how different lexers etc. are "plugged" in and also to show how messy the command line parsing code there is. This batch will probably be a little different since I'm reworking it completely. The syllabus for the first batch is here if you're interested in what we covered http://thelycaeum.in/blog/2014/06/10/mentoring_course_time_table/ http://thelycaeum.in/blog/2014/06/10/mentoring_course_time_t...
• mathewpeterson 10y ago
  I've read that Redis (https://github.com/antirez/redis https://github.com/antirez/redis) has well written code, in C.
  • sidlls 10y ago
    It is very good.
  • nodesocket 10y ago
    I've also heard that Redis is incredibly well written. However, is it common for production C code to have a single file with 5,300+ lines? https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/4.0/src/cluster.c https://github.com/antirez/redis/blob/4.0/src/cluster.c
    • brongondwana 10y ago
      https://github.com/cyrusimap/cyrus-imapd/blob/master/imap/imapd.c#L14152 https://github.com/cyrusimap/cyrus-imapd/blob/master/imap/im... cough Yep
    • exDM69 10y ago
      > However, is it common for production C code to have a single file with 5,300+ lines? It's definitely not uncommon, but yes, that file is on the long side. However, it is rather clean and well-organized. It may be due to the poor module system (header files) of C where you end up making files slightly longer than ideal because splitting into two files means also adding some header files and thus adding to the maintenance burden. When writing C code, I usually strive to put a whole "module" in a single file, so that no "private" interfaces have to be put in header files. Everything that needs to be exposed in order to test a module goes in the public interface. It's a tradeoff and C being C doesn't help (and C++ wouldn't really help here IMO), but I see nothing wrong with the file you picked. It's a bit long but it looks well done to my C programmer eyes.
    • chillingeffect 10y ago
      Right off the bat, I see multiple instances of str* functions where strn* functions should be used. I'm also wondering about this variable "server" which seems to have an unknown definition. There are lots of gotos, and many other deferred high-quality conventions, such as explicit parenthesis in comparisons, re-ordered fields in comparisons, chains of else ifs, where a switch would be preferable. I also see lots of prototypes (all?!) defined at the top of the file instead of in a header file. They could be made static. Also, the generic type "int" isn't a good idea because it can change, it helps avoid porting problems to specify the size (int32_t, uint64_t, etc.) And the memcpy()'s should be changed to memcpy_s(). On the bright side, the comments are quite good and plentiful. Refreshing!
• gigatexal 10y ago
  Upvoted the op. I'm learning Java so if anyone has some particularly good and idiomatic Java (Java 8 preferably) that'd be awesome.
  • dubin 10y ago
    Not Java 8 perse, but I remember getting linked on HN to the source code for the Java collections library: http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/root/jdk/openjdk/7-b147/java/util/HashMap.java#HashMap http://grepcode.com/file/repository.grepcode.com/java/root/j... Had a ton of fun jumping around.
    • gigatexal 10y ago
      Thanks!
  • nfa_backward 10y ago
    Facebook Presto - See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13626109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13626109
• albeebe1 10y ago
  I don't have an example to give, but i can offer this. During the prototype phase, anything goes, speed is paramount, you just have to make it sort of work. Don't get hung up practicing pretty looking code during this phase. You should always practice, but don't get hung up. Prototype given the green light? Ready to dive into the build phase? I'll say this, google for "coding style guide"
  • jowiar 10y ago
    The challenge with style guides as an approach to "nice code" is they often focus on the code equivalent of writing a grammatically correct line of code -- things that can be often caught with a linter. Where I see things fail a lot more is in the code equivalent of "How do I structure a paragraph" or "How do I organize this paper", which most things under the "style guide" umbrella don't cover.
    • sidlls 10y ago
      I've always thought of the "how to write grammatically correct code" style guides as being relevant to writing high quality code in the context of a team that may onboard a new person or an internal transfer: they provide some baseline guarantee (insofar as the team honors them, of course) of the structure and formatting of the code. This reduces some amount of friction in a team. The benefits provided are largely context dependent (e.g. they'll benefit teams that expect to have a couple of senior engineers and many juniors on a relatively constant basis more than a team of experienced engineers in general), but I think having a style guide is important for any "large enough" engineering organization. I've also always insisted on including at least some loose guides to cover the "how do I structure a paragraph" cases. These generally are going to vary on a project by project basis, though, so they're going to be more vague as a rule.
  • herbst 10y ago
    Especially with Rails as rapid prototyping language this is kind of a bad advice IMO. Usually the prototype already will be the base of your application and we both know you will never get rid of all the dept you could build that way
• dorfsmay 10y ago
  https://github.com/bottlepy/bottle https://github.com/bottlepy/bottle A single file running both in python 2.7 and 3.
• herbst 10y ago
  If you are into ruby/rails already start reading internels instead of docs whem using rails. Rails has a very nice ans clean code base and they do a lot to keep it that way
  • mikekchar 10y ago
    Without trying to start a flame war, while there is definitely good code in Rails, my personal opinion is that the architecture of Rails is not something you necessarily want to emulate. And this is really the problem when you are new, I think. Many people will love one thing while others will hate it. It's difficult to create an informed opinion. My advice is actually not so much different than yours. Definitely checkout the Rails internals, but keep a reserved opinion. Then contrast it with other things. From a framework/library perspective look at Sinatra or other web frameworks that that a completely different philosophy. Try to understand the advantages and disadvantages to many approaches. Again, I want to stress that my intent is not to be critical of Rails (heck it provides the bulk of my paycheck and I'm very grateful it exists!). My intent is really to say not to be so hung up about finding good code, but rather take a long term view of comparing different approaches and thinking through for yourself what you think is good. People who have a different view point than mine, shed light in corners that I won't look. That's always a good thing.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
• dangoldin 10y ago
  One of my favorite simple examples of what clean and elegant code can be is Peter Norvig's spellchecker: http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html It's in Python and a single file but it comes with a wonderful description and shows how a complicated task can be broken down into a few small and powerful functions.
  • rimliu 10y ago
    But small systems are easier to get nice. Once they are not small it is there where all the hell begins. Alas, it is a big systems where nice code helps most.
    • dangoldin 10y ago
      Definitely true! You also have the luxury of tweaking every line of code for a small system to get it perfect. It's also the reason for trying to break down larger systems into smaller, elegant components.
• pan69 10y ago
  Sorry, I don't have a link to some beautiful code. I assume that as a developer you are interested in solving (business?) problems through the act of writing software? It isn't much different than being a painter I guess. To be able to be a good painter (or to be considered a good painter) you first need to have a good grasp on how to use the brush and how to handle paint (e.g. oil paint), i.e. you need to learn the technique. The more versed you become with the technique the better you will become at painting, or, over time you will become better at painting what you intent to paint, to paint what's in your minds-eye because you don't have to think about the brush and paint anymore. When it comes to software you first need to have a good grasp on programming. This means you will need to spend time practising the act of programming. Using two languages that are very different from each other might be good. E.g. learn an imperative and functional language. In your case this might e.g. Ruby and Lisp. Your programs will need to interact with other systems so you probably need to learn about operating systems, databases, queues, networking, etc. You probably don't have to be an expert in everything but being a good all-rounder will certainly be beneficial. Over time you will see that it becomes easier to think in solutions of the bat rather than focusing on how you're going to solve a problem. This is basically what is being referred to as experience. So, to be a good developer you need to put in the effort and you need to put in the time. There usually aren't any short cuts. I've been doing this professionally for over 20 years and I'm still learning every day.
  • aerovistae 10y ago
    "So you're an architect eh, and you want to study existing architecture to see how it was built, eh, to get better? Well you can't. Sorry, I don't have any buildings or architectural blueprints ready for you. That's not how you learn. You need to study architecture, not look at buildings and how they're built. There's no shortcuts here. I've been an architect for over 20 years and I've never looked at a building."
  • bbcbasic 10y ago
    OP says "I keep reading on HN that I'm order to become a better developer I need to write code everyday, and more importantly read other people's code." It hardly sounds like he is looking for a shortcut
• tmnvix 10y ago
  You'll find some great examples in a variety of languages on The Architecture of Open Source Applications site: http://aosabook.org/en/index.html http://aosabook.org/en/index.html
  • rs86 10y ago
    This book is amazing
• ibnudaruaji 10y ago
  I personally love xyncro's codes. Their writers are so obsessed with comments, clarity, and consistency across their repositories. For example, you can see https://github.com/xyncro/freya-optics/blob/master/src/Freya.Optics.Http/Response.fs#L27 https://github.com/xyncro/freya-optics/blob/master/src/Freya... and can immediately see the clarity and the consistency of the writer.
• userbinator 10y ago
  UNIX v6 source code: http://v6.cuzuco.com/v6.pdf http://v6.cuzuco.com/v6.pdf A tiny C-subset JIT: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8746054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8746054 It might even be controversial to suggest these are examples of "good code" today, because the majority of code I've seen lately seems to be overly verbose and complex. In contrast, these are extremely simple and concise for the amount of functionality they contain. I think this style has unfortunately disappeared over the decades of promoting lowest-common-denominator so-stupid-even-an-illiterate-could-read-it coding styles and enterprise OOP design-pattern bloat-ism, but when I think of "good code", I don't think of Enterprise Java; I think of code which, upon being told what it does, makes you think "wow, I never thought it would be so simple."
• GnarfGnarf 10y ago
  Donald Knuth, "Literate Programming", tangle/weave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming). The same source can produce compilable code, or formatted comments.
  • tedmiston 10y ago
    Literate programming is certainly a very neat idea. I wonder if he would consider IPython / Jupyter notebooks an approximation of it?
• rdtsc 10y ago
  Not Ruby but for C code, I like Redis's code: https://github.com/antirez/redis/tree/unstable/src https://github.com/antirez/redis/tree/unstable/src I don't personally use the product, but I find the source well written and always share it as an example of nicely done C code. Here is some nice Erlang code I like -- network packet parsing: https://github.com/msantos/pkt/tree/master/src https://github.com/msantos/pkt/tree/master/src Notice how concise this is: codec( <<4:4, HL:4, ToS:8, Len:16, Id:16, 0:1, DF:1, MF:1, %% RFC791 states it's a MUST Off:13, TTL:8, P:8, Sum:16, SA1:8, SA2:8, SA3:8, SA4:8, DA1:8, DA2:8, DA3:8, DA4:8, Rest/binary>> ) when HL >= 5 -> ... This is due to the beauty of binary pattern matching. You could kind of do it in C by casting to a struct but notice here it is also calculating header length (HL) as part of the match operation. So it can do a bit more than just casting a binary blob to a struct. Another thing here is that it is also big endian by default so there is not need for htons(), htonl() and such functions sprinkled throughout the code.
  • ebbv 10y ago
    Not disputing the code quality of either above project, but over valuing brevity / being concise is a common cause of problems. Specifically, people will often sacrifice readability and robustness for brevity. At this point in my career I don't really value being concise at all. Which is not to say you shouldn't ever think about "Can I write less code here?" but the goal there should be writing less code to make what you're writing more robust, more stable, more readable and not just shorter. If there's one thing I could tell every programmer early in their career (including a younger me) it would be; nobody's going to be impressed with how clever you were when they're frustrated trying to understand what the heck is going on. Including you in 6 months.
    • rdtsc 10y ago
      There is a difference though when it is something custom and new (say if this code defined or parsed a new protocol) vs parsing an existing protocol. Notice https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc791#section-3.1 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc791#section-3.1 section diagram. That code is basically an almost perfect translation of the RFC diagram, down to the bits involved. That is the beauty here: minimal impedance mismatch between the specification and code.
• symisc_devel 10y ago
  SQLite/Fossil source tree is a piece of art, practically every single function is well commented, written in clean C, easy to read. DRH has done an astonishing work. I'm impressed by his work. In my company where we do embedded C, the programming style is based on him. https://github.com/symisc/ https://github.com/symisc/
• personjerry 10y ago
  Facebook's open source C++11 library: https://github.com/facebook/folly https://github.com/facebook/folly
• dualogy 10y ago
  I took a quick look recently at id software's GitHub repos of their old blockbuster games (Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake) and gotta say it was the first-ever C codebase I encountered that I found eminently readable.. (whether it's "good C", I can't assess though)
  • Ologn 10y ago
    I agree, the id code is very well organized and readable.
    • guillaumec 10y ago
      Doom original C sources what made me realise how simple and powerful C could be.
  • test1235 10y ago
    https://github.com/id-Software/wolf3d https://github.com/id-Software/wolf3d https://github.com/id-Software/Quake https://github.com/id-Software/Quake https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2 https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2 https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM
• smashingweb 10y ago
  Your post inspired me to inspect element to see the front-end code on HN only to find out the layout is all tables...
• zubat 10y ago
  The implementation of Project Oberon. It is so sensible that it can be hard to notice the magic. http://www.projectoberon.com http://www.projectoberon.com
  • tluyben2 10y ago
    That is a good read for many reason. Recommended to anyone interested in programming, operating systems and software architecture.
• emodendroket 10y ago
  This stuff about "reading code" is basically bullshit and nobody does it. http://www.gigamonkeys.com/code-reading/ http://www.gigamonkeys.com/code-reading/ > Seibel: I’m still curious about this split between what people say and what they actually do. Everyone says, “People should read code” but few people seem to actually do it. I’d be surprised if I interviewed a novelist and asked them what the last novel they had read was, and they said, “Oh, I haven’t really read a novel since I was in grad school.” Writers actually read other writers but it doesn’t seem that programmers really do, even though we say we should. > Abelson: Yeah. You’re right. But remember, a lot of times you crud up a program to make it finally work and do all of the things that you need it to do, so there’s a lot of extraneous stuff around there that isn’t the core idea. > Seibel: So basically you’re saying that in the end, most code isn’t worth reading? > Abelson: Or it’s built from an initial plan or some kind of pseudocode. A lot of the code in books, they have some very cleaned-up version that doesn’t do all the stuff it needs to make it work.
  • johnfn 10y ago
    Maybe not too many people read code just to read code, but you absolutely have to read code when working on a project that's not your own, and that experience is very valuable.
  • khedoros1 10y ago
    I don't read code just to learn in general, but I read it to find specific undocumented details or to figure out how someone solved a particular problem. Of course, you've got to read a ton of code if you're working in a large project. It is a great way to find new ways of doing things, and to gain experience-based opinions, but I certainly wouldn't be doing it if I didn't have a very specific goal in mind.
  • sunir 10y ago
    Most novelists are bad. Most devs are bad. No one seems to know how to tell they are a bad one, but I think we have a good filter: do you voraciously read other people's work? Code in books is dumb. The real code to read is other code you use or interact with. eg reading the jquery source or the Rails source or code reviewing a colleague. Almost always one does this while answering a question about this source. Trying to understand what a library call is doing or tracing a bug. You learn a lot this way including coding tricks and style points.
• bandushrew 10y ago
  Check out the WASTE text API, its written in C and its very nicely done.
• abecedarius 10y ago
  At the top of https://github.com/darius/code-canon https://github.com/darius/code-canon I collected a list of other places people have answered this quesion. (The rest of the page is mostly a list of books with worthwhile code, because I'd already written it and because it's harder to think of code outside of books that I can recommend as easily.)
• elvinyung 10y ago
  I really like Unicorn[1]. It's a very well-architected webserver with a nicely structured codebase. Reading the code has taught me about some neat tricks, e.g. self-pipe trick, and a lot about `fork`. Additionally, I've on occasion consulted the Linux kernel and PostgreSQL repos. Would recommend, although I'm definitely either lying or very ignorant if I said I was familiar with them. 1: https://github.com/defunkt/unicorn https://github.com/defunkt/unicorn
  • bebop 10y ago
    PostgeSQL has some very easy to read and well documented source code. Great place to look if you need anything related to db data structures.
• msinghai 10y ago
  A few weeks ago, I spent some time in reading O'Reilly's Beautiful Code (http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596510046.do http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596510046.do). The book is essentially a collection of essays from various programmers describing what they think of as beautiful code. I particularly liked Brian Kernighan's description and implementation of a regex matcher, and Travis Oliphant's discourse about multidimensional iterators in NumPy. Worth a read.
  • drostie 10y ago
    One of the first tech talks I remember was Bryan Cantrill at Google, and I vaguely remembered that he mentioned at the beginning of that talk that he had contributed to a book called Beautiful Code, so I double-checked and it seems to be the same book. Looking back up the talk, it points to his review of the book here: http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2007/07/28/on-the-beauty-in-beautiful-code/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2007/07/28/on-the-beauty-in-beau... > More specifically: read [two specific chapters with very different attitudes on what makes code beautiful]. It seems unlikely to me that one person will come away saying that both are beautiful to them. (And I’m not talking new-agey “beautiful to someone” kind of beautiful — I’m talking the ”I want to write code like that” kind of beautiful.) This is not meant to be a value judgement on either of these chapters — just the observation that their definitions of beauty are (in my opinion, anyway) so wildly divergent as to be nearly mutually exclusive. And that’s why the title is perfect: both of these chapters are beautiful to their authors, and we can come away saying ”Hey, if it’s beautiful to you, then great.”
• hkmurakami 10y ago
  I've been told by several people that they look to Flask as well written, well designed code that everyone can learn from.
• snissn 10y ago
  Jquery source is great, how i learned a lot of javascript. Not a rubyist but I'm sure the RoR source is good too!
• mastazi 10y ago
  I remember reading years ago an article [1] on "Communications of the ACM" that explained why hwpmc's code [2] is an example of beautiful code. The article had a great influence on me; I recommend reading it. [1] http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/7/5379-kode-vicious-beautiful-code-exists-if-you-know-where-to-look/fulltext http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2008/7/5379-kode-vicious-beaut... [2] http://fxr.watson.org/fxr/source/dev/hwpmc/ http://fxr.watson.org/fxr/source/dev/hwpmc/
• bebop 10y ago
  I always enjoy digging into django-rest-framework [0] when I need to. It is IMHO one of the best idiomatic pieces of python code I have read. [0] - https://github.com/tomchristie/django-rest-framework/ https://github.com/tomchristie/django-rest-framework/
• house9-2 10y ago
  Not exactly reading code but if you are interested in rails and ruby you might want to checkout: - Ruby Tapas: https://www.rubytapas.com/ https://www.rubytapas.com/ - Destroy all Software: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog - looks like it is a bit more expensive than it used to be, but there is a lot of good stuff in those first 5 seasons.
  • dwoot 10y ago
    I second this. Gary Bernhardt is well-respected and I've learned so much from him when I first started doing Ruby and Rails. He has some good ideas about software and he's very good with his tools (vim, zsh, git). He doesn't just cover Ruby. There's some Python in there as well and screencasts on how he uses his tools. You can just subscribe one month and download all the episodes. He already knows that members do this. I do, however, support what he does and have kept my membership.
• ankurdhama 10y ago
  One of the most important attribute of good code is that it should be easy to extract "How the problem is broken down into smaller problems and how the solutions of the smaller problems are combined to solve the original problem".
• bigjimslade 10y ago
  I found DPDK and FreeBSD's pkg package manager to be very clean and educational. Reference http://www.dpdk.org http://www.dpdk.org and https://github.com/freebsd/pkg https://github.com/freebsd/pkg
• gbog 10y ago
  I like most the python code written by Norvig in http://norvig.com/python-lisp.html http://norvig.com/python-lisp.html and other parts of his site. It's very expressive and simple. Real code will have much more corner cases and logging and error handling crust but still should tend to this simplicity
• carapace 10y ago
  I really like the (JS) code for the Turing Drawings art app. https://github.com/maximecb/Turing-Drawings https://github.com/maximecb/Turing-Drawings
  • kasbah 10y ago
    Just had a brief look over this and have to say I am not a fan. The comments are largely redundant, e.g: // Get a reference to the canvas canvas = document.getElementById("canvas"); // Set the canvas size canvas.width = 512; canvas.height = 512; And then missing when they could be useful (or a more clear data structure should have been used, e.g. an object with colors as keys): var colorMap = [ 255,0 ,0 , // Initial symbol color 0 ,0 ,0 , // Black 255,255,255, // White 0 ,255,0 , // Green 0 ,0 ,255, // Blue 255,255,0 , 0 ,255,255, 255,0 ,255, ];
• jetset15 10y ago
  I highly recommend reading this book: https://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Ruby-Jay-Fields/dp/0321984137 https://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Ruby-Jay-Fields/dp/032198... Not only does it contain great code snippets but it also covers repeatable techniques that will ease your life as a ROR programmer immensely.
  • rimliu 10y ago
    And there is a nice companion: http://www.poodr.com http://www.poodr.com
• cathartes 10y ago
  Not Ruby--but pretty all of the code I've seen from Charles H. Moore, the "inventor" of Forth. His code tows that fragile line between self-documentation and brevity. It inspires me, giving me firm reminder that computer code can be Art as much as Science.
  • misternugget 10y ago
    Your comment made me curious. Do you have any examples you could link to that you think are good?
    • cathartes 10y ago
      Off the cuff, some public examples of his more recent code are contained in ArrayForth, the development environment for the GreenArrays GA144 chip and itself a direct descendant of the original standalone colorForth for PCs: http://www.greenarraychips.com/ http://www.greenarraychips.com/
• fsloth 10y ago
  Read whatever you find interesting. The point is to familiarize oneself with various ways to implement things. How to know what is good code? Fuck "idiomatic" - usually the code that is simplest and easiest to understand is the best. Towers of obscure abstraction for it's own sake are usually an indicator of poor engineering and poor taste.
• the_arun 10y ago
  I always liked code written by Jersey team - https://github.com/jersey/jersey https://github.com/jersey/jersey. It is clean and legible. Though it is Java (not Ruby as your question mentions) IMHO The concept of "Clean code" is language independent.
• runeks 10y ago
  Writing code is really a modelling problem: you write down code that describes the model that's inside your head. When you're done, you're left with both working code on a hard drive, and a new, better model inside your head, because you understand the problem better. So, reading someone else's code can be like reading a model of something that has gone through dozens of iterations, where the bottleneck isn't really understanding "the code", but understanding the thing that is modelled, which the people writing the code are intimately familiar with, unlike you[1]. In my opinion, developing this modelling skill, in yourself, is much more important than watching the result of someone else exercising their modelling skill. A lot can be learned from observing someone else's solution, but this will always be secondary to learning how to craft your own. [1] For example: try reading compiler code. People have been writing compilers for so long that reading and understanding this code isn't about understanding the actual code, but about understanding how a compiler is modelled (scanning, lexing, parsing).
  • tumbling_stone 10y ago
    I completely agree. I've been thinking of replicating a mid-sized project written by a programmer that I respect so that I think a lot more about the model before comparing the code.
• lkrubner 10y ago
  This was also asked a year ago, and I pointed to Zach Tellman, and that comment was upvoted by others. I'll post the same again. Because he always has excellent reasons for the decisions that he makes, I find it interesting to read his code and try to figure out why he made the decisions that he did. This is in Clojure: https://github.com/ztellman/manifold/blob/master/src/manifold/stream/async.clj https://github.com/ztellman/manifold/blob/master/src/manifol... Also, it is fascinating to consider how Go routines were implemented as part of Clojure core. Huey Petersen wrote a fantastic analysis of how state machines were used to implement Communicating Sequential Processes: http://hueypetersen.com/posts/2013/08/02/the-state-machines-of-core-async/ http://hueypetersen.com/posts/2013/08/02/the-state-machines-... You can read along while looking at the source code here: https://github.com/clojure/core.async https://github.com/clojure/core.async This is a great implementation of Communicating Sequential Processes, first described by Tony Hoare in 1977: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_processes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_sequential_proce... This is the same technique that Javascript/NodeJS uses to implement its async.
• coleifer 10y ago
  Why, my own of course! Peewee[1] is a lightweight ORM, and Huey[2] is a task queue. [1]: https://github.com/coleifer/peewee https://github.com/coleifer/peewee [2]: https://github.com/coleifer/huey https://github.com/coleifer/huey
• richdougherty 10y ago
  I love reading Oleg Kiselyov articles/papers. Just a few lines of Haskell or ML and some amazing concept is unlocked. A great exercise is to port some of his code to a language of your choice. http://okmij.org/ftp/ http://okmij.org/ftp/
• z3t4 10y ago
  Any code that, when looking at it, you know exactly what it does ...
• raesene6 10y ago
  If you're working in Rails then I think you can get a lot of benefit from reading/writing some "pure" ruby code. Rails has a lot of its own ways of doing things, so it can be nice to see how to solve problems without using it's help. For things to read, these books are a little old now but I liked them . https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-rubyist-second-edition https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-rubyist-seco... and http://eloquentruby.com/ http://eloquentruby.com/
• wayn3 10y ago
  Just reading the first couple replies to this thread, there seems to be some confusion regarding what code quality IS. Two broad categories: 1. Micro code quality. Looking at a single file, someone makes statements about code style - spacing, variable naming, etc. - things you would find in a style guide like PEP8. 2. Code Design. Testable code, the absence of edge cases where unnecessary (for example, turning the root of a tree into an edge case) and broader design questions; and things like correct choice of algorithm. Code quality kind of encompasses both, but its obvious how you can be bad in one category and still be really good in the other. Really good code is good in both, but if I had to pick, I'd like to be good in category 2 first at the expense of 1. Assuming 2., 1. can be improved easily. I'd like to say something about concise code as well. Concise code, or code that does a lot in very little lines can be treacherous. This can be fun when your team is all very senior C programmers who actually understand all this code. Then, brevity is good, but when you work in open source, or write software that has to be read by people who are inferior to you, being concise may not be the way to go. This is almost similar to premature optimization, but not really. People who write really good C code optimize - but not prematurely. They just know that what they're doing is efficient.
• nathan_f77 10y ago
  I've spent the last 4 days reading through the parallel ruby gem [1] and contributing some changes. It's been a good to refresh my memory about concurrency in Ruby, and Michael Grosser is probably the most responsive maintainer I've ever worked with. Really good reviews and suggestions on my PRs. [1] https://github.com/grosser/parallel https://github.com/grosser/parallel
• scandox 10y ago
  I'm teaching myself C (pure hobby) and I really liked these codebases: https://github.com/antirez/kilo https://github.com/antirez/kilo https://github.com/meetecho/janus-gateway https://github.com/meetecho/janus-gateway The obvious caveat here is that I have no idea what makes a good C codebase. What I liked in both was I was able to: compile and run them easily make tiny changes and observe them easily read and understand a reasonable portion of them enjoy the odd comment here and there
• niilohlin 10y ago
  The kickstarter app is open source and has amazing code quality: https://github.com/kickstarter/ios-oss https://github.com/kickstarter/ios-oss
• ainiriand 10y ago
  It strongly depends on what are you looking for. 2 examples: - Git source code is 'almost' perfect. It is a good example. - Symfony source code. Good example of modern web code. Great collaboration and documentation.
• Dowwie 10y ago
  For Python, check out the Pyramid web framework: https://github.com/Pylons/pyramid https://github.com/Pylons/pyramid
• khana 10y ago
  Well speaking Java 8, this java to html library is clean, mean and tight: https://j2html.com https://j2html.com
• keithb- 10y ago
  I'm not sure I understand this idea. By "read code" do you mean run the program in your head? As in, "start with main(), follow this loop, go to func()..."? Because if that is the case, then I think it is really debugging not reading. It would be great to debug projects and there are many projects that include unit tests which can help guide engineers along a slow path to greater understanding. Personally, I like writing code and borrowing ideas from other, better engineers. I also like my code to be clean and without cruft: https://github.com/keithb-/Valley https://github.com/keithb-/Valley But I don't even know if I could "read" my code. It's a web app; there isn't a main(), there isn't a loop. In order for someone to read it, they would need to mentally "send a request" which means they need to somehow have the concepts or the context in their mind when they sit down with the source code. I just don't know how that is supposed to help an engineer, regardless of age or experience.
• irfansharif 10y ago
  I've found the google/leveldb[1] source code to be immensely educational, authored by Jeff Dean and Sanjay Ghemawat. A relatively tiny codebase at that, used virtually everywhere and the basis for facebook/rocksdb[2]. [1]: https://github.com/google/leveldb https://github.com/google/leveldb [2]: https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb
• m23khan 10y ago
  To me, good code not only means smart/savvy logic+architecture, but it also means that it is equally well-documented. Therefore, for starters, For scripting language such as Ruby, check out Satish Talim's Ruby tutorials (URL: http://rubylearning.com/satishtalim/tutorial.html http://rubylearning.com/satishtalim/tutorial.html) For compiled language such as Java, check out a recent version of 'Big Java' from your local library.
• JCDenton2052 10y ago
  You can learn what constitutes good code by reading bad code- it is safe to assume that there is a lot more bad around than good! Some flags: -God objects (they do everything!) and their opposites, freeloaders -1000-line methods -No unit tests -Not-invented-here syndrome, otherwise known as "let's write our own array class!" -No separation of concerns (everything mashed together) -Not concerned with issues such as performance, maintenability and security After you look at too much bad code (which, by the way, will include your own), you acquire a very instinctual understanding of good practices.
  • mschaef 10y ago
    I think another way to put many of the items on your list is that the code should read as a description of what it intends to do, rather than how it intends to do it. Breaking code into components and giving those components useful names goes a long way towards achieving this goal. For me, at least, this helps with the act of writing the code, in addition to the act of reading it. I am not nearly smart enough to keep in mind all of the things that need to be done to write solid code. So I compensate by developing abstractions that let me forget about details, assume they're handled (for the moment) and focus on just a small part of the problem at hand. The act of writing the code in that way tends to lead to a more manageable style. > -Not concerned with issues such as performance, maintenability and security This is where engineering sense comes into play. I'd personally rather not pay for things I don't need, particularly if an undue focus on performance, etc. means my cost overruns my budget. Perfect is the enemy of the good, and all that...
    • JCDenton2052 10y ago
      "This is where engineering sense comes into play. I'd personally rather not pay for things I don't need, particularly if an undue focus on performance, etc. means my cost overruns my budget. Perfect is the enemy of the good, and all that..." I agree, however, making at least an effort is preferable than not caring. What I had in mind was the developer of a legacy system at my previous work. He couldn't understand why I was fussing over performance metrics and I told him I couldn't understand how he could not. The reply was that they had enough trouble "making the bloody thing working", so anything else was peripheral.
• ysavir 10y ago
  At the end of the day, good code is code that solves your problem. Trying to define "good code" without considering the problem will not deliver much punch. If we're talking a small application, such as a new startup, writing efficient and optimized code is hardly a concern. In this case, good code means flexible, easy-to-change code. The code must make it easy to modify existing features and add new ones. Compare that to, say, Google's search. The feature isn't evolving much anymore, in terms of functionality, but it needs to be as efficient and optimized as possible, considering the bulk of data it needs to read through, and the immense traffic it gets every second. Sure, you still want flexible code, but speed is critical. If we're talking an open-source project, the most important part could very well be documentation and ease-of-read. when you have dozens to hundreds of people writing new features, making optimizations, and solving bugs (in their free time and without compensation!), quality of communication takes on a new significance. These are, of course, simplifications, and the accuracy can be debated (as these situations always have an incredible variety of factors), but the point is that "good code" is not something that can be defined in a vacuum: it can only be defined in terms of the situation at hand.
• timthelion 10y ago
  I was very impressed with the sorce code to this application: http://florence.sourceforge.net/english.html http://florence.sourceforge.net/english.html Nothing groundbreaking, just basic OOP code, but it was unique in that I started reading the source code and understood it quickly.
  • timthelion 10y ago
    I also found xpra's code to be easy reading. Also very unexceptional. I read it and I'm like "meh", but I understand it. And that is the important part! http://xpra.org/trac/wiki/Source http://xpra.org/trac/wiki/Source
  • crescentfresh 10y ago
    Is the source available online anywhere? I can't see anything of the sort on that page.
    • timthelion 10y ago
      Here it is: https://sourceforge.net/p/florence/code/ci/master/tree/ https://sourceforge.net/p/florence/code/ci/master/tree/
• tboyd47 10y ago
  Great question. I would say just read the source of whatever libraries you like to use, and let your inner sense of "smell" guide you. Since you mentioned Ruby, start by reading Rails itself. For all the hate people have for it, I believe it really is a solid exemplar of above-average code. Reading through the ActiveRecord source just after Rails 3, and seeing the way it was semantically organized by feature via included modules, was an inspiring moment for me as a coder. It was probably the first time I'd seen code that was simultaneously practical, modular, and readable. You should never trust people's statements about what techniques are good and bad in a language. It's called "code smell" because you can judge it for yourself without having others dictate a judgment for you. Just like you can decide for yourself whether something smells bad or good.
• _0ffh 10y ago
  For C++, I think Jules Storer's code might be worth a look.
• m1el 10y ago
  NASA's HELAPix, in C: http://healpix.jpl.nasa.gov/ http://healpix.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/healpix/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/healpix/
• antoaravinth 10y ago
  Not ruby, but Javascript. Have a look at underscore js source: https://github.com/jashkenas/underscore/blob/master/underscore.js https://github.com/jashkenas/underscore/blob/master/undersco... I really loved it! Especially those _ functions are small, concise and easy to understand as well. Very good codebase. (very good example of functional programming concepts)
  • jashkenas 10y ago
    Thanks! There's an annotated version available here, which might be a little easier on the eyes: http://underscorejs.org/docs/underscore.html http://underscorejs.org/docs/underscore.html Underscore's codebase has grown some warts and wrinkles over the years, as optimizations and browser edge cases find their way in ... but the guiding principle is still to keep it as svelte as we can manage.
• HugoDaniel 10y ago
  Just Nothing -- ^ Haskell
• preordained 10y ago
  I don't even like Python (Ruby guy myself) but the various stuff Peter Norvig has done (typically in Python) for demonstrating coding problem solutions. I think you benefit the most if you try doing the problem yourself (like the Advent of Code series), and then compare your solution to his. What I've often found is that Peter is just great at isolating the minimum required model/data structure. More often than not, when I notice his solution has half the code of mine, it's because I used the wrong model.
• lee101 10y ago
  in terms of rails code https://github.com/coderwall https://github.com/coderwall coderwall is a well used/known blogging site for devs