Question

I am close to completing Zed Shaw’s Learn Python The Hard Way. I also know that the second best thing to programming excellence apart from actually getting hands on and working on a project is to study other peoples code. Thanks to all the repositories out there, there is no shortage of projects that one can download and study.

However its also fair to say that not all projects are of the same quality in terms of design and quality of code. I have a Phd in writing bad programmes and therefore will not want to re-educate myself.

May be you have been impressed with a piece of python application (design and code quality wise) when you started out learning. In that case I will like to know so as to benefit from it myself.

Answer 1

That sounds like a dangerous question 🙂

I say that because although there are many different ways to design a solution, each approach typically has it’s own pros and cons. A well designed application is the culmination of many, many deliberate decisions based on numerous factors, not limited to:

• Budget
• Timeline
• Scale of the application
• Available technology
• Performance requirements

Performance is an especially tricky area because often one will optimize code to specific anticipated (or observed) usage patterns. Performance optimization may also include certain heuristics that might fly in the face of what is accepted as “good practice” but under fire it may be the best approach.

I would suggest a good place to start is looking at common factors of good coding practices. For example:

• Maintainability (how easy is it for a developer-new to the application or not-to modify the application – ideally without breaking everything)
• Reusability (how logically is the application structured so key portions of the code can be reused) this both make the software easier to maintain and also generally indicates good structure
• Readability (how well is the code visually structured/how well are methods/variable etc named in the source files etc) This is very important if you hope to code in a team 🙂

Other things that would be worth looking at are how efficiently resources are used.

For broader “architecture” examples, it would be easier to enumeriate good examples of specific patterns than list general apps exhibiting “good software architecture” Also, just about any application of substance has had code written under fire which can lead to bad examples mixed in with the good.

If I were to pick something specific to, you know, directly answer the question I would say bittorrent is both interesting and well designed/written. For a good summary of several cool aspects about the project, check out this article BitTorrent Style