The Deepmind Atari Player is only 22KB of source code:
https://sites.google.com/a/deepmind.com/dqn/
If you haven't seen the video it's remarkable:
Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
61–70 of 262 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#62The Go standard library. At least two things coming together: A stripped down language, that explicitly aims to be readable and experienced programmers / authors.
I'm not sure I agree with that. JSON parsing uses panic() and recover() for some logic. And templating is more of a PoC for coroutines in Go than a properly fleshed out library. Not to mention that the AST parsing for Go is horribly designed (though you can do some cool stuff with it).
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#63Not specifically "software" but this piece of Haskell code is the most beautiful code I've ever seen: quicksort [] = [] quicksort (x:xs) = quicksort [y|y =x]
The recursive Fibonacci definition in Haskell is far more beautiful IMO. But there's always more beautiful one-line snippets (like the regex that can tell you if a number is prime).
fibs = 0 : 1 : zipWith (+) fibs (tail fibs)
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#64The Go standard library. At least two things coming together: A stripped down language, that explicitly aims to be readable and experienced programmers / authors.
I'm not sure I agree with that. JSON parsing uses panic() and recover() for some logic. And templating is more of a PoC for coroutines in Go than a properly fleshed out library. Not to mention that the AST parsing for Go is horribly designed (though you can do some cool stuff with it).
I guess, the library authors needed to learn Go themselves as they build up the stdlib.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#65Drivers. The interface between the physical world and the digital world. They are the lenses of computers as much as its magic.
The code for most drivers however, is less than beautiful. And I'd argue that it's controller firmware that is the "real" bridge between the analogue and digital.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#66Grand central dispatch is so beautifully designed. Both its API and just general use. It clicked with me the first time it got introduced and I abandoned bothering with NSOperarion
I like NSOperation. Basically because I find it nice to encapsulate tasks that are to run in another thread in their own class. Not always, of course, but if they are "long enough", I think they should stand on their own.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#67X11 terminal emulator as one C file:
http://git.suckless.org/st/tree/st.c
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#68Not sure if this is what you're looking for, but from the UX side, Square Cash. Does one thing, does it well with large responsive colorful UI that still displays everything you need to know. Is minimally invasive (debit card instead of bank account verification). Uses your existing contacts, so everything "just works" by default.
Not looking for anything specifically, I'm just a junior developer and mostly in javascript. I'm just looking for traits, common elements or approaches to beautiful software. So thank you for sharing :D.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#69Kind of out-of-place but Manic Time is the best GUI I remember having used on Windows.
It has every feature but takes 5 minutes to learn. And it (mostly) seems to do the most reasonable thing every time you do anything.
(plus: there is a working free model and a really useful paid upgrade.)
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not my software, but if you have looked at other FTP clients this is an amazing thing to read though.
Other clients code being bad does not make this code easy to read or beautiful. All those MAX_STR and strcat's make me wonder about security: https://github.com/Hypsurus/skod/blob/master/src/ftp.c#L14 Amazing read: https://github.com/Hypsurus/skod/blob/master/src/ftp.c#L22 No enum again: https://github.com/Hypsurus/skod/blob/master/src/utils.c#L14
I hold it to a standard of how to organize your code. The organization of the source is superb.
Even without much documentation, you can go through and read it while understanding what is happening.