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Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#232

Post by Centigonal »

bajsejohannes wrote: post #15

Redis. The interface is quickly obvious using telnet (which makes all clients pretty obvious). The documentation is both succinct and complete. All operations are listed with their big-O notation.

Redis's interface and docs are a joy to work with. Everything just feels so straightforward and uncomplicated. The config file stuff gets a bit weirder, but it's still pretty easy.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#234

Post by not2b »

jeppester wrote: post #184

Git 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 think the core concepts behind git are extremely elegant, but the complexity of using it effectively and the very large number of operations make it substantially less elegant.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#235

Post by Centigonal »

Rollercoaster Tycoon!

The game is beautiful, performant, and almost entirely hand-written assembly by one guy.

Plus, the parks themselves can look very elegant (kind of like factorio factories).

https://www.pcgamesn.com/rollercoaster-tycoon/code-chris-saw...

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#236

Post by kstrauser »

synicalx wrote: post #229
iwebdevfromhome wrote: post #119

The 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.

That's where I'm at with OmniFocus. I love it so much, but it's really expensive, and I'm finding the extra features above Reminders aren't as crucial to my daily life as I'd thought.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#237

Post by wildrhythms »

Centigonal wrote: post #235

Rollercoaster Tycoon! The game is beautiful, performant, and almost entirely hand-written assembly by one guy. Plus, the parks themselves can look very elegant (kind of like factorio factories). https://www.pcgamesn.com/rollercoaster-tycoon/code-chris-saw...

Shoutout to the OpenRCT2 project! https://openrct2.org/ Lots of great QOL fixes and improved modern hardware support.

For another fun game in this genre, check out Parkitect which has some additional logistical elements around transporting and hauling stall inventory https://themeparkitect.com/

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#238

Post by version_five »

DC-3 wrote: post #166
biorach wrote: post #158

Peter Norvig's 27 line spell checker https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html

This is nice. One interesting choice is the decision to compute the number of observed words, N, as the default value of an optional argument, thereby ensuring that it is only computed once, while still limiting its scope to the function in which it is needed. Perhaps this is a common pattern but it's one I haven't stumbled across before. The short circuiting `or` chain is also pleasantly virtuosic. Sometimes a littl…

> One interesting choice is the decision to compute the number of observed words, N, as the default value of an optional argument, thereby ensuring that it is only computed once

You're saying python computes an expression that's part of a default value when the code defining the function is run? I guess it makes sense now that i say it, I wouldn't have automatically assumed that. That's an interesting one to remember.

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