What's the largest amount of great code you have ever seen work?

5 points by fabiopetrillo 7y ago ↗ HN

Inspired be the question "What's the largest amount of bad code you have ever seen work?", I would like to know if we could identify the largest great amount of code you have ever seen work. Thanks a lot for your thoughts!

3 comments

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davelnewton 7y ago ↗

I suppose it'd depend on the definitions of "great" and "work". Original moon shots? Latex? In general, once you reach a critical mass of code, it stops being "great" and starts being "mundane", because "mundane" works.

hazz99 7y ago ↗

The Erlang BEAM VM is fantastic work of art, from what I've heard. I've tried reading the source, but it's all low-level optimized C code, which goes way over my head.

deanmoriarty 7y ago ↗

Linux kernel. Huge, but well organized and relatively easy to read.