My vote is for SQLite. It is very well written, incredibly well tested, and one of the simplest and most flexible tools out there. My favorite part is the extensive documentation explaining the architecture decisions they made.
Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
81–90 of 262 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#82The HashLife algorithm for Conway’s Game of Life:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife
My implementations in Literate CoffeeScript:
And JavaScript:
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#83"Another World" There's a very interesting write up here: http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/ The game itself has an amazingly beautiful vector style. The engine is remarkably tiny, 20kb. I decided years ago if I ever find time to build a game I'd like to architect it like "Another World".
He wrote tinycc, qemu, a new image compression, AND he can write? Who is this man?
I think you're confusing Fabien Sanglard (writer of the above article) with Fabrice Bellard (prolific programmer)
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#84"Another World" There's a very interesting write up here: http://fabiensanglard.net/anotherWorld_code_review/ The game itself has an amazingly beautiful vector style. The engine is remarkably tiny, 20kb. I decided years ago if I ever find time to build a game I'd like to architect it like "Another World".
He wrote tinycc, qemu, a new image compression, AND he can write? Who is this man?
You're mixing him up with Fabrice Bellard, I believe (http://www.bellard.org/)
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#85maru lisp by ian piumarta : Maru is a symbolic expression evaluator that can compile its own implementation language.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Related: - Things That Turbo Pascal is Smaller Than: http://prog21.dadgum.com/116.html - A Personal History of Compilation Speed, Part 2: http://prog21.dadgum.com/47.html
Turbo Pascal 5 got me into programming. I wish people would build smaller things again.
Remember punching in 4 pages of Pascal from a PC Magazine in early 90s. I had no idea about anything, syntax, semantics... it was long and painful.
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#87Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#88Arthur Whitney's one-page interpreter: http://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Essays/Incunabulum
unicorns level in ioccc standards
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#89The most beautiful I'm aware of is Robert Strandh's SICL ( https://github.com/robert-strandh/SICL ). CL-PPCRE ( https://github.com/edicl/cl-ppcre ) is very nice as well, imo. What makes them beautiful? They're very straight forward and clearly communicate what they're doing, and how. And the parentheses in their language of choice softens the visual display of the code -- while the semantics of the language cause the…
Note SICL is used in CLASP https://github.com/drmeister/clasp (according to CLASP author's talk somewhere)
Re: Ask HN: What are some examples of beautiful software?
#90SolveSpace - parametric CAD program. Single executable, well done UI, small code base, nice constraint solver, originally by a single person. It's the only OSS CAD I've found useful (QCad was second, then FreeCAD). There are also a few active developers now with major improvements on the way.
Cool! I was looking for a decent free CAD program. Will check it out.
Be sure to get the latest from whitequarks repository. He's been doing (or integrating) most of the recent development including the GTK3 and native OS X ports.