Beautiful code: graph search in prolog. So much in as few lines as possible[1]
[1]: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~billw/cs9414/notes/prolog/path-t...
Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
31–40 of 262 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#32Turbo Pascal for DOS. Simple, compact, quick, well documented, reasonably easy to learn, and not too expensive.
I think that bloat is the enemy of beauty, so we're probably likely to find beauty in software that does a few things well.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#33Not 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]Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#34This Beauty! I mean that in terms of code aesthetics.
http://www.ioccc.org/2011/eastman/eastman.c
(winner of the 20th International Obfuscated C Code Contest)
Nevertheless once you run it, you will have a sweet surprise.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#35Check for the Beautiful Code book. It has some examples in it.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#36The way ruby uses instance_eval. I didn't pay attention at first, I just enjoyed the beautiful interfaces. But when I saw how they use instance_eval behind the scene and how simple is, I was in awe.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#37Doom.
At the time I had never heard of Binary Space Partition Trees. Beautiful concept for a monument of a game.
http://fabiensanglard.net/doomIphone/doomClassicRenderer.php
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#38FMOD [1] sound framework provides one of the best C API's in industry : stable, works everywhere, clean and beautiful. Please find API example at [2].
[1]: http://www.fmod.org/ [2]: https://github.com/fmod/ue4integration/blob/master/FMODStudi...
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#39"Another World" There's a very interesting write up here: http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/
The game itself has an amazingly beautiful vector style. The engine is remarkably tiny, 20kb. I decided years ago if I ever find time to build a game I'd like to architect it like "Another World".
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice, but they are solving a problem that is not all that hard. For example, I'd rather see a beautiful implementation of a concurrent garbage collector (which probably doesn't exist because it is almost impossible to achieve; a purely functional programming approach doesn't even apply here). Or how about a beautiful implementation of a web browser?
"Nice, but they are solving a problem that is not all that hard." Apparently it was hard if it took that long to get a great, clean, FOSS solution to the problem.
Well, in any case, I've never heard of a government software project being overdue because their proxy cache contained spaghetti code :)
To be clear, I'm not trying to denigrate this project in any way. I'm just saying that the complexity of the problem should be taken into account here.