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Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?

#121

Post by rorychatt »

teyc wrote: post #91
h0bzii wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/* don't even try to load if not enabled */ if (!jit_enabled) return false; I still think comments like these are super redundant and annoying.

Comments are usually less prone to logic bugs. When fixing issues, if the code behaves opposite to what the comment says, it can be a very helpful clue.

An argument can be made that this is what Test Driven Development is here to solve. State intent in the test, not the comment.

That said, I agree it can be a helpful contextual clue.

Re: Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?

#123

Post by taspeotis »

orneryostrich wrote: post #112
westoncb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like that's how this question is always answered. I'd also be interested to see some good application code. Also curious about some good, not too hugely sized, game code (preferably something not written in C/C++, maybe like an indie game from the past decade or so). Anyone know something?

Keldon Jones’ Race for the Galaxy AI is brilliant. Every line is documented C. It trains and deploys a neural net. It has a fast and functional GUI. Most diehard RftG players have cut their teeth by losing to Keldon a few dozen times before really learning the game. Keldon was contracted a few years later to develop the RftG apps on iOS and Android, which are easily worth $4. Source: https://github.com/bnordli/rftg P…

> Every line is documented C

Every line? Oh dear [1]:

    /* Set verbose flag */
    verbose++;
    ...
    /* Set advanced flag */
    advanced = 1;
    ...
    /* Set expansion level */
    expansion = atoi(argv[++i]);
    ...
    /* Initialize game */
    init_game(&my_game);
I assume the verbose flag is incremented because there's multiple levels of verbosity, whereas the advanced flag is a boolean, and i is incremented because expansion is not a command line flag (rather, an option). But I wouldn't know that from the comments! Especially useful to know if like, verbosity actually has multiple levels, like -v and -v -v or -v -v -v and so on ... instead of knowing that init_game is ... init'ing the game.

Compare all those comments to this [2], which is actually a spectacularly useful comment.

Signal to noise ratio!

[1] https://github.com/bnordli/rftg/blob/master/src/learner.c

[2] https://github.com/bnordli/rftg/blob/master/src/replay.c#L94

Re: Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?

#124

Post by Yajirobe »

quadcore wrote: post #117

it seems that in real life, a really high-quality codebase is hard to come by I think a common misconception amongst mid-experienced programmers is that they confuse look with quality. Reading clean written code gives you a feeling of control and also the feeling that someone must have thought about that program. It's reassuring. You have in front of you a code that gives you trust. When in fact, that code can be com…

dont u mean a 2x2 matrix

Re: Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?

#125

Post by philsnow »

slondr wrote: post #106
tschwimmer wrote: post #55

Perhaps I'm jaded, but I notice that all the examples given here are developer tools or otherwise things with well scoped functional inputs and outputs (e.g. ffmpeg). Anyone have an example of a consumer application that has a good codebase? Chromium, GitLab, OpenOffice, etc? I feel like such applications inherently have more spaghetti because the human problems they're aiming to solve are less concretly scoped. Even…

NetHack's source code is absolutely beautiful. It's probably the most well-kept, well-designed, well-structured and well-implemented K&R C program in history. Although they are switching to ANSI syntax soon. It's even more amazing because NetHack is (1) a video game, where generally speaking code quality is sacrificed for efficiency, and (2) it has been developed by a constantly changing team of volunteers over the c…

Nethack suffers somewhat because the era in which it was birthed required a lot of portability, so there is a ton of #ifdef-ery which can be difficult to reason about.

#ifdefs are themselves spaghetti; windows.c [0a] and files.c [0b] have tons of platform-related ifdefs (but, mercifully, not too much nesting), hacklib.c [1] has some deep-ish ifdef nesting (though, again mercifully, well commented)

Ok on re-reading some of this, I guess it was worse in my mind than it actually is. Nethack was the first large codebase I ever made any changes to and tried to understand, so maybe the relative enormity at the time made a negative impression.

Check out the source for Brogue [2] for what I consider to be pretty readable game code.

[0a] https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/blob/NetHack-3.6/src/wind... [0b] https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/blob/NetHack-3.6/src/file... [1] https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/blob/NetHack-3.6/src/hack... [2] https://sites.google.com/site/broguegame/

Re: Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?

#126

Post by Izkata »

quadcore wrote: post #117

it seems that in real life, a really high-quality codebase is hard to come by I think a common misconception amongst mid-experienced programmers is that they confuse look with quality. Reading clean written code gives you a feeling of control and also the feeling that someone must have thought about that program. It's reassuring. You have in front of you a code that gives you trust. When in fact, that code can be com…

> by running it in your head.

I have encountered far too many people who don't even realize this is a thing. I figure they must be doing it in some limited form and just aren't recognizing it as a skill that can be trained up, otherwise I'm not sure how they can do any development, but...

Re: Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?

#127

Post by IshKebab »

tenebrisalietum wrote: post #110
dwild wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Postgres codebase is what got me out of the "good code is self documenting" nonsense. I'm a fervent believer in "good code is self-documenting", so I was curious to be proven wrong, clicked randomly until I found code and I saw this. /* * Round off to MAX_TIMESTAMP_PRECISION decimal places. * Note: this is also used for rounding off intervals. */ #define TS_PREC_INV 1000000.0 #define TSROUND(j) (rint(((double) (j))…

Possibly INterVal?

Inverse.

Re: Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?

#128

Post by Wowfunhappy »

bitwize wrote: post #34

NetBSD, hands down. Beautiful, simple to understand, consistent. The documentation is also top notch -- I wrote a trivial character-device kernel driver using only the man pages as a reference. And you can too. Also -- the source code to Doom. Read it, marvel at its clarity and efficiency -- and then laugh when you realize that the recent console ports were completely rewritten in fucking Unity . And the Switch versi…

> and then laugh when you realize that the recent console ports were completely rewritten in fucking Unity. And the Switch version chugs, despite the original running well on 486-class hardware.

I wonder why they didn't just write an emulator, then. Especially on the Switch if there are performance issues.

Re: Ask HN: What are the “best” codebases that you've encountered?

#130

Post by kstrauser »

taspeotis wrote: post #123
orneryostrich wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keldon Jones’ Race for the Galaxy AI is brilliant. Every line is documented C. It trains and deploys a neural net. It has a fast and functional GUI. Most diehard RftG players have cut their teeth by losing to Keldon a few dozen times before really learning the game. Keldon was contracted a few years later to develop the RftG apps on iOS and Android, which are easily worth $4. Source: https://github.com/bnordli/rftg P…

> Every line is documented C Every line? Oh dear [1]: /* Set verbose flag */ verbose++; ... /* Set advanced flag */ advanced = 1; ... /* Set expansion level */ expansion = atoi(argv[++i]); ... /* Initialize game */ init_game(&my_game); I assume the verbose flag is incremented because there's multiple levels of verbosity, whereas the advanced flag is a boolean, and i is incremented because expansion is not a command l…

Yikes, I've gotta agree:

    /* Exit */
    exit(1);
Well, yes, I see that. It might have been helpful to extend that to "Exit with an error status", perhaps, but as-is it tells you literally nothing that the code doesn't.
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