Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

#161

Post by fufefderddfr » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 5:05 AM UTC

fufefderddfr wrote: post #30

It's funny to read what people think are beautiful apps here. IMHO, the most beautiful software are always games and entertainment titles... After all that is the purpose. Office 2013? It's very useful! I use a classic menu template and got rid of the ribbon, since the functionality is the same, but in my preferred format. Beauty does not come into play with office... I can use it for creating beautiful PowerPoint an…

I've evaluated what I have used over the years...

POSER 4 seems like the most beautiful app.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

#162

Post by nemo1618 » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 5:08 AM UTC

mtrn wrote: post #21

The Go standard library. At least two things coming together: A stripped down language, that explicitly aims to be readable and experienced programmers / authors.

Seconded. I'm not sure if this is common for other languages, but I use the Go stdlib as a reference for what good Go code should look like. And reading it often reveals little language tricks that I wasn't aware of.

Example: The Sum method of the hash.Hash interface takes a byte slice as an argument, and appends the hash to it. Why not take zero arguments and simply return a new slice? Because the authors recognized that if you're doing hashing, you probably care about performance. Appending to a supplied slice allows you to save an allocation.

The stdlib is full of little details like that, and it adds up to a really great programming experience. Go may be lacking in some respects, but it has Good Design stamped all over it.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

#163

Post by zem » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 5:16 AM UTC

stray wrote: post #3

The most beautiful I'm aware of is Robert Strandh's SICL ( https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL ). CL-PPCRE ( https://github.com/edicl/cl-ppcre ) is very nice as well, imo. What makes them beautiful? They're very straight forward and clearly communicate what they're doing, and how. And the parentheses in their language of choice softens the visual display of the code -- while the semantics of the language cause the…

wow, sicl really is a beautiful project. thanks for the pointer.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

#164

Post by skewart » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 5:25 AM UTC

oluckyman wrote: post #152

tbrock wrote: post #101

C: anything by antirez (redis, etc...) Redis is the epitome of well written understandable C. Ruby: anything written by _why (if you can find the source) He once gave a whole presentation on the splat operator and it's bizarre uses that gave me goosebumps. A true artist. The code twists and contorts ruby in unimaginable ways. JS: anything written by TJ hollwaychuck (express, mocha, etc...) Express is so simple but po…

"The code twists and contorts ruby in unimaginable ways." Doesn't sound like my idea of beautiful software.

I completely agree. It sounds like the opposite of beautiful software if you ask me. Maybe it's interesting, thought-provoking, or amusing code, but not beautiful.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

#165

Post by slantedview » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 5:31 AM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #150

Anything by Zach Tellman: https://github.com/ztellman/aleph https://github.com/ztellman/automat In terms of his ideas, watch "Always be composing": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oQTSP4FngY And he offers some great thoughts about queues and backpressure in "Everything will flow": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bNOO3xxMc0

I was going to post this. Not only is Zach's work very creative, but it's very well written, composable stuff.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

#166

Post by davepeck » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 5:31 AM UTC

I've always found FreeType to be quite wonderful; it integrates the artistry and mathematics of typography with entertaining low-level wizardry.

Take a look at the rasterizer, for example: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/freetype/freetype2.git/tree...

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

#167

Post by skewart » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 5:34 AM UTC

tbrock wrote: post #101

C: anything by antirez (redis, etc...) Redis is the epitome of well written understandable C. Ruby: anything written by _why (if you can find the source) He once gave a whole presentation on the splat operator and it's bizarre uses that gave me goosebumps. A true artist. The code twists and contorts ruby in unimaginable ways. JS: anything written by TJ hollwaychuck (express, mocha, etc...) Express is so simple but po…

I think that list is more of an answer to the question "What are some examples of widely-used FOSS projects created by famous programmers" than it is an answer to OP's question about beautiful software.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

#168

Post by sysret » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 5:38 AM UTC

examples:

1. a. whitney 2. ioccc.org winners (djb, etc.)

what makes [some] software beautiful?

the ugliness of other software.

most software is large, slow, complicated and bug-ridden.

this makes small, fast, clean software written by competent programmers "beautiful".

taste varies. what is too terse and "obfuscated" to some is pleasingly succinct and manageable to others.

right now there's another post about yann lecun on the front page. he once wrote a lisp-like interpreter that compiles to C called "lush". of all the lisps i have tried i think it's one of the more "beautiful" ones in it's design.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

#169

Post by nstart » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 5:45 AM UTC

This might sound crazy but I actually found the discourse source code to be a beautiful thing. When I read it I had never used ruby beyond understanding the syntax via ruby koans. And one day I wanted to learn how they manage long running tasks without blocking the rest of the web application, and so I jumped into the code using only github and github source code search. 15 minutes in I had notes which drew the entire picture of how and where sidekiq comes in and how and where emails are constructed (I was starting out by trying to understand how things like password reset emails are handled iirc). I know there must be some ugly parts in there, but I went in with no understanding of what to look for except some keywords. I came back with a pragmatic understanding of how to implement a certain workflow regardless of language or framework. This was the mark of something beautiful to me.

Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?

#170

Post by lucaswiman » Mon, Mar 14, 2016, 5:50 AM UTC

Peter Norvig's sudoku solver is beautiful on all levels. http://norvig.com/sudoku.html

It's clearly explained code that's shorter than you would have thought. Norvig showcases his expertise in manipulating both the basic data structure of the Python language, and a deep understanding of the underlying problem and methods for solving it.