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I never implied that I studied the Linux kernel codebase insight out -- specifically, I was interested in the networking stack and the VFS layer, and from there

I never implied that I studied the Linux kernel codebase insight out -- specifically, I was interested in the networking stack and the VFS layer, and from there I looked into the memory subsystem and certain drivers implementation. I did map the codebase to the extent that I can more less find my way around easily. Same is true for Chrome. I was interested in the code for the various UI components, but I looked into other bits here and there. I 've studied most of Postgres, LLVM and Tensorflow codebases - as in, I went through pretty much most if not all files looking for interesting bits (and finding plenty). I guess there's no way to "prove" anything to anyone, but I don't really care or want to do that either -- it's not about bragging rights, if that's what you implied; I just thought I 'd share a list of codebases I came across that I thought were interesting and worth of other people times. As for my job, and my work, you may want to check out my Github profile (https://github.com/markpapadakis https://github.com/markpapadakis) -- though there's only public stuff there. I guess I like to spend my free time learning instead of say, watching tv or waste time elsewhere:)

hoosieree 9y ago
You can definitely skim codebases and get a feel for things like "no comments" or "names are in English", but for large codebases I doubt any single person could say they "understand" it in its entirety. It's hard to even make an observation like "names are meaningful" without a lot of context.
rents 9y ago
Can you also suggest how much time one can expect to spend on a particular codebase (which are listed) to get any meaningful take-aways? I am interested in exploring codebases now that I have sufficient experience and feel confident (and not initimidated). This will be useful because then I can start from the smaller (simpler) ones and move on to the complex ones later. Any recommended path, please do suggest.
- markpapadakis 9y ago
  It depends on the size and what you are trying to do. For example, lately I 've spent maybe a week studying Lucene, and kept going back to it every other day, because I needed to understand pretty much everything about it, to get ideas for improving Trinity ( https://github.com/phaistos-networks/Trinity https://github.com/phaistos-networks/Trinity ). Some other codebases are so vast it takes a lot, lot longer to understand them enough to feel 'comfortable' navigating them (e.g the Unreal Engine codebase). Most codebases however are quite small, and within 1 hour, or a few, you 'll be able to understand where to go to find what you need, which are the primary data structures and functions, etc.

hoosieree 9y ago

You can definitely skim codebases and get a feel for things like "no comments" or "names are in English", but for large codebases I doubt any single person could say they "understand" it in its entirety. It's hard to even make an observation like "names are meaningful" without a lot of context.

rents 9y ago

Can you also suggest how much time one can expect to spend on a particular codebase (which are listed) to get any meaningful take-aways? I am interested in exploring codebases now that I have sufficient experience and feel confident (and not initimidated). This will be useful because then I can start from the smaller (simpler) ones and move on to the complex ones later. Any recommended path, please do suggest.

markpapadakis 9y ago
It depends on the size and what you are trying to do. For example, lately I 've spent maybe a week studying Lucene, and kept going back to it every other day, because I needed to understand pretty much everything about it, to get ideas for improving Trinity ( https://github.com/phaistos-networks/Trinity https://github.com/phaistos-networks/Trinity ). Some other codebases are so vast it takes a lot, lot longer to understand them enough to feel 'comfortable' navigating them (e.g the Unreal Engine codebase). Most codebases however are quite small, and within 1 hour, or a few, you 'll be able to understand where to go to find what you need, which are the primary data structures and functions, etc.