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One of the best ways to learn about programming is reading high quality code/projects from great engineers. Which open-source projects do you think is worth looking at? I mean, that code that you can print and sit under a tree with a glass of wine and enjoy reading.

If you can, also specify if the software is great to look at because its documentation, design, UML diagrams or just plain code. I believe UML is not very common within open-source projects.

Is there such a thing as a project branch that polishes code and design with the sole objective to give other programmers a great example of great software?

Daniel Brose
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SystematicFrank
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    I don't think that any programmer has ever sat under a tree with a glass of wine and read source code. But that might just be my personal bias. – MJB Apr 11 '10 at 20:11
  • for what platform? there already are several similar questions: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/234276/open-source-examples-of-well-designed-applications http://stackoverflow.com/questions/736154/examples-of-open-source-high-quality-well-designed-python-software http://stackoverflow.com/questions/155217/good-c-code-samples http://stackoverflow.com/questions/848126/well-written-c-examples – Mauricio Scheffer Apr 11 '10 at 20:21
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    Some source code makes me want to swig brandy rather than sip from a glass of wine. – APC Apr 11 '10 at 20:29

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I'm pretty impressed with the Chrome source code. Note: I work on the Chrome team but I'm just one of many. I've learned quite a bit from other people's code, the classes used, their design, the methods of unit testing, integration testing, their code review system, their continuous build system and more.

gman
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At the risk of being perceived as a Jon Skeet fanboy, I've looked to his miscellaneous utilities libraries for examples of clear, self-contained, well-documented and well-tested code. .NET, if it matters.

Community
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Michael Petrotta
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It is also very important to understand various different software quality characteristics when you are reading the code samples. This would help you to identify why the coding is good, and which aspect of software quality it gets associated with?

You may want to check out eight different characteristics of software quality specified by ISO 25000 series, also termed as SQUARE specifications.

Ajitesh
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Sharp develop is very well designed and written and comes with a book explaining the design.

Marek
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