You can fit the plan9 kernel into that multiple times (and its not a microkernel)
A project with a single 11,000-line code file
331–340 of 346 posts
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#332I 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.
Wait, hn is written in Lisp?
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#333Back in the days at Zynga, there was this ritual that new members of the STG (Shared Tech Group, which developed the game engine stack) had to try to refactor the road logic code. Suffice it to say, it's a 28k LOC file that was so bad, it could even hold up in court as evidence that a South American company stole the code of Zynga's -ville games. We could reproduce each and every single bug and its effects 1:1 in the…
Man, now I want to test myself against your road logic code. Sounds like a worthy challenge. Always tricky though when the hacks have both undefined features AND bugs.
This could be like that "endless civ2 game save" where OP thought he was in a permanent stalemate but random internet civ2 veterans found it pretty easy to win.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Restaurant industry version: I was so afraid to cook in a dirty kitchen, I ended up not cooking at all. This thread made me realize that's better to sell food prepared on dirty surfaces with unrefrigerated ingredientes half-eaten by rodents and roaches that makes people sick, than fresh food prepared on clean surfaces with clean utensils. I'm glad I read this. This is a restaurant worker story. Construction industry…
No, that is not the restaurant industry version or the construction industry version. You can't possibly compare "good practices" in software with building codes and food safety regulations. Building codes and food safety regulations are based on facts, science, and decades of experiences. Good practices are rooted in ideology, hype, and not based on facts. There are no studies showing that "having tests helps". Ther…
> Good practices are rooted in ideology, hype, and not based on facts.
That is a really sad statement that is predicated on the assumption that nothing can be objectively compared and therefore nothing can be ranked, which is also a way to kill arguments that lead to innovation and iterative improvement.
You can measure the complexity of an algorithm, you can measure the cyclomatic complexity of a function, you can measure code in terms of length, you can count references to external functions or modules, etc.
There are many ways in which you can compare code and make decisions about what style is more convenient for your team.
What is clearer for you to understand?
a) 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1
b) 12
If your argument was true, they would both be the same. We both know that a) is a waste of time.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#335Back in the days at Zynga, there was this ritual that new members of the STG (Shared Tech Group, which developed the game engine stack) had to try to refactor the road logic code. Suffice it to say, it's a 28k LOC file that was so bad, it could even hold up in court as evidence that a South American company stole the code of Zynga's -ville games. We could reproduce each and every single bug and its effects 1:1 in the…
Man, now I want to test myself against your road logic code. Sounds like a worthy challenge. Always tricky though when the hacks have both undefined features AND bugs.
If you're looking for obfuscated code to refactor, nroff[0][1] is pretty notorious.
[0] http://dtrace.org/blogs/eschrock/2004/07/01/real-life-obfusc...
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just do it. Don’t ask for permission. You will end up more productive not less.
This - I've been doing this for years now and simpler code (both simpler logic and the removal of unused code) makes working on legacy codebases feel completely different.
Yep exactly my experience. That combined with solid tests => I spend almost 100% of my time adding new features instead of staring at code and fixing bugs.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#337I 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…
me when i look back at the code i pumped at as a 15yr old writing a java servlet web app that could admin a quake1 tf server game
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, that is not the restaurant industry version or the construction industry version. You can't possibly compare "good practices" in software with building codes and food safety regulations. Building codes and food safety regulations are based on facts, science, and decades of experiences. Good practices are rooted in ideology, hype, and not based on facts. There are no studies showing that "having tests helps". Ther…
> Good practices are rooted in ideology, hype, and not based on facts. That is a really sad statement that is predicated on the assumption that nothing can be objectively compared and therefore nothing can be ranked, which is also a way to kill arguments that lead to innovation and iterative improvement. You can measure the complexity of an algorithm, you can measure the cyclomatic complexity of a function, you can m…
Your example is oversimplifying the problem, I don't think you're proving anything here. I've used tools that calculate cyclomatic complexity, and sometimes they're a good indicator, and sometimes they aren't at all. You can measure the complexity of an algorithm, sure, but unless it comes with a real life benchmark, it's only part of the answer. Same with the length of the code, you can measure the length but it doesn't tell you much about how hard to follow is the code.
If you take any style guide, book about good practice, or stuff like that, you'll find that there are some good ideas, and there are some bad ideas. Even with something as simple as code formatting, we still don't know as an industry if it's better to format everything the same, or use formatting to convey information. The debates about OO, FP, static/dynamic typing are endless and there's no evidence about which is better. There is a rough idea that you need more organization when more people work on code (static types, microservices, more documentation, more isolated parts), but even that isn't really clear.
My assumption is not that "nothing can be objectively compared and therefore nothing can be ranked". It's not even an assumption, it's what I've seen in this industry: we lack data to give objective good practice that go beyond anything trivial ("try to make code easy to read and simple", "give meaningful names to your variables"). There is a wide gap between "common sense" and "cargo cults", which is the gap between easy and complex topics. I would really like if in the last 50 years we had learn a lot about how to build software as an industry, as people. The reality is that we haven't.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Good practices are rooted in ideology, hype, and not based on facts. That is a really sad statement that is predicated on the assumption that nothing can be objectively compared and therefore nothing can be ranked, which is also a way to kill arguments that lead to innovation and iterative improvement. You can measure the complexity of an algorithm, you can measure the cyclomatic complexity of a function, you can m…
Your example is oversimplifying the problem, I don't think you're proving anything here. I've used tools that calculate cyclomatic complexity, and sometimes they're a good indicator, and sometimes they aren't at all. You can measure the complexity of an algorithm, sure, but unless it comes with a real life benchmark, it's only part of the answer. Same with the length of the code, you can measure the length but it doe…
We cannot objectively determine what is a good sandwich length therefore we should eat 1000 mile sandwiches.
Re: A project with a single 11,000-line code file
#340I 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…
It always seemed surprising to me how some of the big Oblivion and Skyrim mods would get by with fairly few bugs despite there being no way to have automated tests and some of them having 10k lines of scripting (or much more in some cases) spread around dozens or hundreds of quests (quests in the CE engine are not just the quests you as a player see, but also a huge number of invisible quests because quest state mach…
I have observed that bugs tend to be introduced when you have more than one person working on a project. Single person projects have very low bugs especially if the coder is experienced and follows simplicity + structured programming.