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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: 0.203s | 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. Breza ◴[29 Aug 25 19:27 UTC] No.45068338[source]▶
I totally agree with you. Some of the most intense thinking I've put into writing code has been when I go out for a run in the middle of the day and come back 30 minutes later with solutions to the thing I spent all morning trying to fix.