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Comment by iron_ball | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to add a subquestion: I'm always told to check out other people's code and study it, but I'm also well aware that popular software doesn't necessarily mean good code. What source-available projects would you recommend I look at if I want to see some quality examples of the craft?

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The OCaml interpreter/compiler is really good. Compare with the Ruby interpreter, which is really bad. SBCL is also interesting; has a lot of good parts.

I recommend finding a mentor. Someone who writes code that you respect (be it for quality, clarity or efficiency). Start reading their code and asking questions.

The open source community is a good place to start looking if you don't have someone you respect in your own community.

And so the question comes full circle: did you have any particular open source projects in mind? It's a big community.

The source code for the Prex real-time kernel is very well-written: http://prex.sourceforge.net/src/

Python. Not all the code is good, but I remember reading a lot of Python code when I was trying to write an interpreter of my own, and some parts of it just left me starting at the screen in amazement, due to the beauty and simplicity of some of the ideas.

Maybe I'm not the best at reading badly commented C code, but Ruby and MzScheme were not nearly as pleasant.

Qmail, both at a source level and the way the overall system fits together.

See also: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?GreatProgramsToRead and the linked pages, which discuss your question further.

I thought of qmail and some of djb's other code too. He has an idiosyncratic but apparently effective way of doing things.

I also like Scheme48.

Linux kernel.

Excluding perhaps parts of the network stack - it's a clever and very compact code, but rather hard to follow for uninitiated.

Can't recommend it. Consider reading something like minix instead.

E.g. boot.c

https://gforge.cs.vu.nl/plugins/scmsvn/viewcvs.php/trunk/src...

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