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This is a nicely written tribute, but there are two generalisations that I feel are worth pointing out. Many parts of Linux kernel are really, really nice C co
by angusgr 16y ago
This is a nicely written tribute, but there are two generalisations that I feel are worth pointing out.
Many parts of Linux kernel are really, really nice C code. Sadly, in my experience most C code is not especially nice. I don't know how this extends to the football metaphor, but certainly I wish most of the C code I have encountered (not to mention written) in my career to date was one tenth as neat.
On balance, I'd say there are other languages (Erlang, Python) where I've personally found the median quality, and level of expression, to be substantially higher (for the random subset of code I've read and my own standards, clearly YMMV.)
The other generalisation is "other languages". Which "other languages" are they? What other projects (despite the Linux kernel) are they reading, and in what contexts?
You can find beautiful or precise code is almost any language if you try hard enough. You can find ugly or obfusticated code in nearly every language without barely trying at all.
- paulsmith 16y agoWhat are some specific examples of beautiful C code in your view? Asking for a friend.
- dxq 16y agoAfter finding the documentation and guides for writing nginx modules woefully inadequate, I did a lot of poking around in the nginx internals to better understand how things worked. The code is very readable, follows good style guidelines, and has its fair share of brilliant workings. I found that the source code served as much better documentation than a lot of _actual_ documentation that I've read.
- cpeterso 16y agoYou beat me to it! I was just about to suggest the nginx internals. :)
- dchest 16y agoPlan 9 code is beautiful http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/ http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sources/plan9/sys/src/ Although there are a few extensions in its C compiler http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/compiler.html http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/compiler.html
- uxp 16y agoI like poking around FreeBSD's code, specifically some of the drivers and userland. I find a lot of code that rpaulo commits to be particularly clean and understandable. Some of rdivacky's work on boot2 and clangbsd is also inspiring to me. http://svn.freebsd.org/base/user/rpaulo/ http://svn.freebsd.org/base/user/rpaulo/
- burgerbrain 16y agoThe Busybox project.
- angusgr 16y agoI'm glad. Somewhere on my mental "code I'd like to read list" is the busybox code, because I don't understand how it does so much with so little. If it does it and looks good, I'm doubly impressed. :)
- silentbicycle 16y agoLua, SQLite, the OpenBSD/FreeBSD userland utilities.
- Turing_Machine 16y agoAs the old joke has it, you can write FORTRAN in any language.