Lua
Inheritance through table extensions is truly an elegance in the eye of beholder :-)
The FFI design is also very clean.
Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
221–230 of 422 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
#222WireGuard
I was going to post this as well.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
#223Hazel. Automation at every level and an easy intro into scripting for non-programmers.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll also point out that the UI for Factorio is almost among the best. I'd prefer a factorio over almost another UI. I'm imagining a port of factorio's UI into most strategy games would be very nice, both from a VERY zoomable map, a clear research/progression tree. A few improvements could be made IMHO, but it's lighyears better than TF, CS, the Chris Sawyer set, etc.
What are TF and CS?
[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
#225Python Trio[0] (an alternative async stack to the builtin asyncio).
It allowed me to implement a mini OTP framework in Python[1].
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll also point out that the UI for Factorio is almost among the best. I'd prefer a factorio over almost another UI. I'm imagining a port of factorio's UI into most strategy games would be very nice, both from a VERY zoomable map, a clear research/progression tree. A few improvements could be made IMHO, but it's lighyears better than TF, CS, the Chris Sawyer set, etc.
What are TF and CS?
Team Fortress, Counter Strike, and Tycoon games.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
#227Not sure if games count as software but if they do - Factorio. I don't play much these days but I'm still utterly stunned how a relatively small, humble team of developers can build something so robust and performant. Granted, I've never really tried pushing the limits, but not once have I felt like the game is even breaking a sweat while processing thousands of machines, belts, and bots. It's a miracle to me. Their…
Factorio is apparently one of the very few games with CI / automated testing.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
#228Not sure if games count as software but if they do - Factorio. I don't play much these days but I'm still utterly stunned how a relatively small, humble team of developers can build something so robust and performant. Granted, I've never really tried pushing the limits, but not once have I felt like the game is even breaking a sweat while processing thousands of machines, belts, and bots. It's a miracle to me. Their…
Factorio really is a bit of a modern marvel, even HUGE factories don't seem to run poorly at all and I genuinely have no idea how. Other similar games made since (Satisfactory comes to mind) seem to struggle with things like keeping track of resources on belts at scale, which IMO is a perfectly understandable problem to have but still makes factorio that much more impressive.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
#229The things app https://culturedcode.com/things/ , even though it's just an elegant TODO app something drove me to buy the iPhone and Mac versions. Some time ago I spent a good amount of time looking for a development stack that allowed me to just build stuff. I ended up trying and deciding on Laravel Jetstream with InertiaJS https://jetstream.laravel.com/2.x/stacks/inertia.html . Laravel was easy enough already to ju…
I love Things, and for a long time used it every day. I just can't get behind their pricing model though, the desktop version in Australia is $80 which is outrageously expensive for a TODO app that can largely be replaced with the slightly inferior but free Reminders app.
Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?
#230Git is the first example that comes to my mind. I'm aware that the concept can be difficult to grasp and that the cli commands seem weird at first. Once it clicks however, it's an absolutely fantastic tool. I'm still often amazed by what is possible with selective resets, diffs, greps, and most impressively interactive rebases. It makes a lot of otherwise difficult tasks much easier, and more elegant. Git is IMO one…
I disagree with this. I think the basic concept of Git is beautiful, but the implementation of some of the derivative operations are distinctly inelegant.
For example, I hate the use of "ours" and "theirs" in merges and rebases. I understand the theory of why it works the way it does and why it's different when merging versus rebasing, but I just think it's downright confusing, and I still have to double check every time to make sure I accept the right changes. I don't understand why they couldn't just use the branch name (or branch + commit hash).