Ask HN: What source code is worth studying? • Hacker News Board

It feels well organized almost throughout, and it's a joy to experience the clarity of thought that went into it. In fact, most of djb's code has a similar feeling to it.

Arthur Whitney's code: http://www.nsl.com/papers/origins.htm

Being able to read this (and not merely decode it, but read it, in a manner similar to how you would read a book) will broaden your horizons like nothing else I've seen.

Re: Ask HN: What source code is worth studying?

#44

Post by statictype » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 4:48 PM UTC

misterbwong wrote: post #29

Any recommendations for good C# code? Much of the web is open source oriented so I don't hear too much about great C# code.

Mono's c# compiler is written in c#. SharpDevelop is another good choice.

Re: Ask HN: What source code is worth studying?

#45

Post by ujeezy » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 4:48 PM UTC

subbu wrote: post #37

Any recommendations for Ruby/Rails projects?

I liked Jamis Buck's (aka the creator of Capistrano) Bucketwise: http://github.com/jamis/bucketwise

Re: Ask HN: What source code is worth studying?

#46

Post by statictype » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 4:52 PM UTC

I learned about sockets and networking by looking at the source for wget.

That's also where I saw calloc.c - A portable implementation of calloc. I distinctly remember it being one of the cleverest hacks I've seen.

Re: Ask HN: What source code is worth studying?

#47

Post by subbu » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 4:56 PM UTC

Any good event-driven JavaScript (jQuery/Prototype is also fine) projects out there?

Re: Ask HN: What source code is worth studying?

#48

Post by eru » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 5:04 PM UTC

philjr wrote: post #24

eru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps MediaWiki?

Personally, I wouldn't recommend it. Unfortunately I can't give a better alternative, but I've done some hacking on MediaWiki since version 1.7 and while it's some of the better examples of PHP out there, it still leaves lots to be desired in different places.

Thanks. My post was just a guess.

Re: Ask HN: What source code is worth studying?

#49

Post by c00p3r » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 5:07 PM UTC

openssh

Re: Ask HN: What source code is worth studying?

#50

Post by stcredzero » Tue, Oct 13, 2009, 5:08 PM UTC

pgbovine wrote: post #26

mahmud wrote: post #14

Your compiler's source code. That should shake your confidence in the world.

for an easier time, your favorite language interpreter's source code ... interpreters are easier to comprehend than compilers, since you can 'follow along' with the flow of execution in the main interpreter loop just like you're executing a program ... e.g., creating stack frames, allocating heap memory, assigning variables, etc.

Squeak Smalltalk. For Java, if you can get hold of it, the old Acme Webserver. That was very clean code.