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Ask HN: Best codebases to study to learn software design?

107 points pixelworm | 1 comments | 24 Aug 25 05:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.341s | source

I’m working on improving my software design skills, and it was recommended that I study existing well designed codebases. What are some publicly accessible codebases you would consider gold standards for software design?
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pfannkuchen ◴[24 Aug 25 06:11 UTC] No.45001808[source]▶
Maybe I’m just not good enough at paying attention, but for me it seems like you have to actually run into problems over and over and figure out how to avoid the problems. Then you end up being able to mentally simulate what problems you will run into, and design is basically all about avoiding future problems of various kinds (and balancing tradeoffs about which future problems to avoid and how much effort to put into each, whether you can solve multiple with one design play, etc).
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1. pixelworm ◴[24 Aug 25 07:32 UTC] No.45002139[source]▶
This is pretty much how I've learned up to this point (and will of course continue). Trying to learn from real world code will be a new experience for me. Not sure how valuable it will be but should be fun either way.