Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Which closed-source software would you most like to see the code for?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 33 posts

Re: Ask HN: Which closed-source software would you most like to see the code for?

#11

Post by zbuf »

Renoise, music production software.

I've found it to be exceptionally stable and responsive; changes propagate with live feedback right throughout the GUI.

I'd really like to see if its qualities are the result of great software design, or just brute force and hammering away at it until the bugs are gone. It strikes me it would be hard to achieve with the latter.

If the architecture is good, whether it is a textbook use of C++ with objects, inheritance and templates, or something more modest/bespoke.

Re: Ask HN: Which closed-source software would you most like to see the code for?

#15

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

jazztoken wrote: post #12

Dwarf fortress. Incredibly complicated simulation and procgen code written by a guy who admits to having very little engineering knowledge.

I think he has spoken about his development methodology and codebase in interviews. From what I remember based on his description it would horrify any professional engineer who saw it but it seems to work for him.

Here is the AMA where he briefly touches on some of his implementations:https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1avszc/im_tarn_adams_...

Re: Ask HN: Which closed-source software would you most like to see the code for?

#16

Post by tjalfi »

violinist wrote: post #4

Visual studio. I've heard that its design is beautiful and I think I'd learn a lot reading it.

Some Visual Studio support libraries are available on Github.

  https://github.com/Microsoft/vs-validation
  https://github.com/Microsoft/vs-mef
  https://github.com/Microsoft/vs-threading

Re: Ask HN: Which closed-source software would you most like to see the code for?

#19

Post by _qxjp »

futhey wrote: post #6

Early versions of Google would be interesting to see (would be interesting to look at parts of a version of the engine that are still small enough to reason about).

I'd have to second this. Especially how they manage to support nearly every browser in existence by serving a (sometimes vastly) different Google homepage based on the user-agent.
Post reply on HN