Software Masterpiece Criteria Discussion

What makes something a SoftwareMasterpiece?

Some of have erroneously suggested that anything which survives the test of time is a masterpiece. But that would force us to accept Cobol, Basic and Dos.

And ViEditor by BillJoy -- has anyone around here checked out the source code ?

The arts require a work to possess merits worth studying and imitating as well as representing the pinnacle of achievement in its genre. So SoftwareMasterpieces must be worth studying and imitating in terms of their code not merely because they're innovative ideas and [or?] they must be the best representative of their genre or era. So a lot of DanBernstein's works would qualify but Perl wouldn't. -- AdewaleOshineye

How about elegance, simplicity, beauty, function and lack of repetition. Personally, I like reading code that has no fluff in it and no duplicated logic. There are lots of programs that get the job done, but probably not too many that get the job done and are small, simple, and elegant with no duplication of logic. If I can jump into code and start deleting stuff without affecting the program's behavior or readability, then that code shouldn't have been there. I can't stand seeing 1500 lines of code when 200 would suffice and have been more maintainable and simpler to enhance. I think BeautyIsOurBusiness because when it's not pretty, it's not simple enough yet, it's not done. RamonLeon

A good definition, but it excludes programs for which source code isn't available. This rules out programs whose greatness lies not in their code, but in their UserInterface. Perhaps we could broaden the definition a little.

Masterpiece status is something accorded by the master's peers not by the patrons. This of course doesn't exclude masterpieces in the field of user-interface design. Just like we have sculptures that are masterpieces and paintings that are masterpieces. But they all would share some superlative technical quality that raises them above the commonplace. Being a masterpiece means something is the 'ne plus ultra' in it's field. This is as good as it gets. It's not about popularity or some other transient aspect of a piece of software it has to be about an aspect that has lasting (educational) value and in which that piece of software can be considered an exemplar.--AdewaleOshineye

Newtek has released the source to Amiga Video Toaster at http://www.openvideotoaster.org/. This first video production software, released in 1991, is a landmark program. It seems that it deserves a place among other great software. While I can't comment on the quality of the implementation, it seems like this is exactly the sort of historic milestone code that deserves a look and annotation.

It's mostly in m68k assembly of course. Maybe the code isn't elegant or worth emulating, but it's a remarkable artifact of an important program. Someone who has a feel for assembly and graphics manipulation code might wish to annotate it and discover if it is a masterpiece or not. --StevenNewton