Other people's code

2023-08-25 • 172 words • ~1 min read ⏲

Hillel Wayne wrote about educational codebases. I find the idea quite interesting, and have been trying to gather some further thoughts into an article, but while writing it, my doubts grew on how feasible the idea beyond a certain threshold of complexity really is. While Hillel demos the idea with small, but extensively commented scripts, I was looking for programs, that are still comprehensible for a single person, but tackle a larger problem/domain. You can find a few examples, especially for system software (operating systems and compilers), that are not for production but not toy programs as well, that are either made for teaching purposes or would at least lend themself well for study. But my current hunch is that this genre will not see significant numbers, for two reasons: it is rather hard to make and there is less demand for an analytical approach of breaking an existing system down into pieces then for for bottom-up and cookbook style material.