What open source codes/projects must every programmer read before his death?
Code which every programmer must read before dying
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: Code which every programmer must read before dying
#2There is no single code or project that I could name. Not because there are no open source codes or projects that weren't worth reading, because there are thousands of them. I couldn't name any, because people are different, and what one finds good and worthy code, the other finds rubbish - thus, there can be no single project that would make every reader happy.
On the other hand, if you look at the question in a different way, you could say that the code (be it open source or not) every programmer must read before his end, is his own. As one looks at his life in one's deathbed, so should a programmer look at his code.
Re: Code which every programmer must read before dying
#3If you are fronted web developer then you should defenitely read jQuery sources. There is a lot of patterns that you could borrow and reuse in your own JS libraries.
A good place to start is this interactive code viewer: http://www.keyframesandcode.com/resources/javascript/deconst... There is also a great presentation by Paul Irish ("10 Things I Learned from the jQuery Source"): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_qE1iAmjFg
Re: Code which every programmer must read before dying
#4SQLite probably has some of the cleanest and most elegant C you will ever see: http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-src-3070602.zip
Re: Code which every programmer must read before dying
#5I'd say the original lisp paper: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/recursive/recursive.html by John McCarthy
Re: Code which every programmer must read before dying
#6Duff's device.
Re: Code which every programmer must read before dying
#7I think a very good example of when OOP is genuinely useful and desirable is the Twisted Networking Engine: http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/browser/trunk/twisted
Re: Code which every programmer must read before dying
#8SQLite probably has some of the cleanest and most elegant C you will ever see: http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-src-3070602.zip
I won't argue about code quality of SQLite, because I know it's superb, but the coding style is just horrible.
Take a look at anything in OpenBSD (ex: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.sbin/bgpd/bgpd...) or nginx (http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.0.0.tar.gz).
Re: Code which every programmer must read before dying
#9SQLite probably has some of the cleanest and most elegant C you will ever see: http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-src-3070602.zip
I won't argue about code quality of SQLite, because I know it's superb, but the coding style is just horrible. Take a look at anything in OpenBSD (ex: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.sbin/bgpd/bgpd... ) or nginx ( http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.0.0.tar.gz ).
You're right, Nginx is great too. (I'm not familiar with the OpenBSD source, but it looks good.) I probably prefer Nginx to SQLite, but I think that's mostly personal preference -- I don't like excessive in-source documentation.
Re: Code which every programmer must read before dying
#10The Sudoku solver by Peter Norvig http://norvig.com/sudoku.html and not only for the code but also for the excellent essay.