Magboltz [1] is a single >95k line Fortran file (although, I'm not sure if it's multiple files combined into one before upload).
A project with a single 11,000-line code file
111–120 of 346 posts
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#112That beats the 1000 lines inside a single if {} block that I once found. (The conditional in that if {} always evaluated to true).
Yeah, but the function only had a single exit point, so it was following best practices.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#113The most strangely maintainable code, though I should probably put maintainable in scare quotes, I have ever seen was a astrophysics code that calculated the changes to spectrum during interactions with background fields. That thing hat two loong nested loops, in the outer loops it calculated local backgrounds, and the inner loop was basically a Euler solver that used the backgrounds from the outer loops.
The outer loop was something like 4 kLOC, and consisted of blocks where there were first 20 lines of loadTable(filename) calls, then a call to calculateLosses( ) and then freeTable( ) calls. The inner loop was a little bit of setup and then a very long part where all those losses would be subtracted from the spectra.
The funny thing was, that once you got the structure, that code was actually not that bad. However, I told my boss several times that the second something comes along and doesn't exactly fit into that pattern the entire thing will blow up, and was always told that they maintain that code for 15 years and that didn't happen yet.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#114I remember many years ago coming across a reimplementation of the server side for a popular MMORPG of the time, reverse-engineered from the client (which was Flash) by what was likely a teenager --- it was over 100k lines in a single file, written in Visual Basic. Global variables everywhere, short names, and not even indentation. All the account data was stored in flat files, there was no actual DB. No "best practic…
Funnily enough, I have recently had great success by reversing the "best practices" on a distributed "micro services" architecture application into a single big Java file.
Best practices were the usual suspects DRY, IOC, SQL + NoSQL, separation of concerns, config files over code, composition over inheritance, unexplainable overlapping annotations, dozens of oversimplified components doing their own thing, and some $something_someone_read_on_a_medium_post
The Single Java File was around 500 lines no db, lots of globals, a dozen or so classes and some interfaces, Threads for simulating event based concurrency, generous use of Java queues and stacks but i specifically made it static with Zero dynamic hashmaps.
It actually runs in my IDE, I can understand what the hell the product is supposed to do what component is doing more than it should and more valuable was to predict what could break if I change that value in the helm chart from 5.0 to 5.1.
It is quite useful and pleasing, I can actually reason about things and I have new found use and appreciation for Type Systems and compile errors. And I can write tests that run in under 3seconds.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've sadly come to realize (after witnessing on many projects) that there's a pattern that goes like this: * Team A writes code quickly. Not bad code, really, but they take shortcuts everywhere they can. They don't have the strongest tests, they don't generalize for all the known use cases, etc. Their code goes to beta and gets users and makes progress. * Team B deliberates and deliberates. They try to avoid taking s…
+1 I had a lot of trouble trying to explain this to juniors. The most important things is to have code that is easy to refactor when you know what you're doing (i.e. everything is working properly). Juniors I worked with had a nasty definition of a pretty code being split into a hundred files, each no longer than a screen, and each function no longer than 5 lines. The onboarding of new devs to such code was way worse…
"Flat is better than nested" - The Zen of Python
I had an "everything should be broken into a hierarchy!" stage back when I was learning to code, and boy was I off track. In my defense, at the time (and this dates me) OOP was all the rage.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#116> What is the moral of the story?
Either figure out how to improve the situation, or leave.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#117I remember many years ago coming across a reimplementation of the server side for a popular MMORPG of the time, reverse-engineered from the client (which was Flash) by what was likely a teenager --- it was over 100k lines in a single file, written in Visual Basic. Global variables everywhere, short names, and not even indentation. All the account data was stored in flat files, there was no actual DB. No "best practic…
Ironically, this is a description of hacker news itself. https://github.com/shawwn/arc/blob/arc3.1/news.arc
(HN has indentation, though.)
It’s important to realize that this is good design. It’s hard to separate yourself from the time you live in, but the rewards are worthwhile.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#118I remember many years ago coming across a reimplementation of the server side for a popular MMORPG of the time, reverse-engineered from the client (which was Flash) by what was likely a teenager --- it was over 100k lines in a single file, written in Visual Basic. Global variables everywhere, short names, and not even indentation. All the account data was stored in flat files, there was no actual DB. No "best practic…
You can get away with a lot on a single developer project and best practices aren’t in place solely to make code functional.
That application would likely fall apart if multiple developers of with diverse backgrounds had to maintain it and add new features.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've sadly come to realize (after witnessing on many projects) that there's a pattern that goes like this: * Team A writes code quickly. Not bad code, really, but they take shortcuts everywhere they can. They don't have the strongest tests, they don't generalize for all the known use cases, etc. Their code goes to beta and gets users and makes progress. * Team B deliberates and deliberates. They try to avoid taking s…
Be Team C. Team C works like team A. However every time a feature ships, someone who knows that feature well immediately refactors the relevant code to remove the prototype scaffolding. When code becomes static, an expert adds good quality comments. When a bug is found, it is recreated in a regression test prior to being fixed for good.
The sad reality of tech companies is that there is little incentive or bonuses for improving the situation. You won't get a bonus for cleaning up the code or for rewriting rotten code.
Hack at the code for 4 years, collect your options and leave the mess to someone else.
To be honest, a hacky codebase written fast is not the worst codebase to deal with. The worst type is when someone had the time to overarchitect and overengineer things.
Following references across 200 different files, tracing calls through hundreds of microservices. Graphql servers with complex resolver logic.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#120I remember many years ago coming across a reimplementation of the server side for a popular MMORPG of the time, reverse-engineered from the client (which was Flash) by what was likely a teenager --- it was over 100k lines in a single file, written in Visual Basic. Global variables everywhere, short names, and not even indentation. All the account data was stored in flat files, there was no actual DB. No "best practic…
Presumably VB.NET? Because the VB6 IDE wouldn’t let you write more than 65534 lines [1]. Don’t ask how I discovered this.
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/visualstu...