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Comment by swah | Hacker News Reader

I also hoped this submission could trigger a discussion about the code style.

This guy is a Mozilla contributor, probably what other posts mean when they talk about "great programmers", right? Yet, for now, his implementation is a single 3000 line file.

[edited for alternate ending]

So there is this guy who writes a PDF viewer in a 3000 line file, and the guy who writes another simple web app neatly organized in 42 files... Which one would you want on your team?

I wonder how jslinux source code is organized.

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3000 lines of spaghetti code is one thing. But this code is pretty-well modularized. The author obviously knows what he's doing.

Maybe he finds it easier to jump around the file that way. I know I've built up projects like that. When it starts to transition from tech demo to real product, I would probably break it up into different files (util.js, lexer.js, etc). But no harm in the meantime.

A simple web app spread across 42 files might actually be terrible and over-engineered. Or it might not. The moral is: don't judge code quality by isolated metrics.

Which one would I want on my team? - the one that produced game changing results. If I need to send in some students with cattle prods and bio-hazard suits after the fact - so be it.

I have seen _many_ important demos and prototypes that were truly ear-bleeding - to the point where I would say it is a common characteristic of this sort of work.

I think this is far from production ready code and this guy just wanted compact code. Perfectly fine for a quick copy/paste demo.

Another thought - this could be the output of his packed code, sort of like what we get when downloading mootools unminified - one big file, but that's not how authors store the code internally.

He's getting stuff done. That's what great programmers do. Also, a PDF viewer isn't simple. If he can write a PDF viewer -- that works with a variety of PDF files -- in a short space of time, I wouldn't really mind how he organizes the code. It's the research behind the code that takes the time here.

what's wrong with a 3000 line js file? if the code is organized well, a good editor with an outline view makes jumping around 3000 lines no problem. actually I would prefer it over multiple files if I feel the code I wrote belongs to that "module".

Perhaps Andreas is waiting on ECMAScript Harmony modules:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=568953

What are you asking me to agree about? I would never get caught dead working on a 3000 line file, and honestly, that seems like a terrible way to have to add new features.

Some perspective:

    $ wc -l expr.c decl.c
    26638 expr.c
    34860 decl.c

I'm assuming those are from GCC?

No, the Delphi compiler.

Ah, this morning someone told me that if I wanted to get serious about my constant folding I should be aware the GCC impl was XXXX LOC (in the same neighborhood as what you posted) so I assumed :)

Really? Downvoted this much for simply implying that I don't appreciate 3000 line files? I didn't imply that it was bad or wrong, just that I wouldn't prefer to work with that type of style. And I hardly think that a couple of hyper counter examples takes away from my own opinion in coding style.

I apologize for editing my comment - after reading yours - to try to convey my message better. And failing to do that, and making yours kinda senseless. Will avoid that in the future.

Hehe. No problem, I was just generally blown away. Loading the full thread back up makes it more obvious now. Oh well, I get edit happy too!

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