Ask HN: Where do I find good code to read?
One thing to look for are programs that use advanced techniques as opposed to programs that are just simply clear or well-commented.  For instance,  instead of learning a new programming language,  you should learn how programming languages are made.  Most of the secrets that computer science majors know that you probably don&#x27;t were learned in compilers class.<p>(Unfortunately many people are chasing the Holy Grail of &quot;functional programming&quot; and never finding it because &quot;functional programming&quot; is a pale shadow of what&#x27;s possible when you understand how compilers work:  this is how Common LISP and scheme are so much more profound then,  say,  Haskell)<p>It&#x27;s a little out of date but I was lately thinking up about the Scott Adams adventure games of the early 1980s that were written with a specialized interpreter which could be implemented in BASIC but was also implemented in assembly language for better performance.  See<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ahopeful.wordpress.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;09&#x2F;13&#x2F;digging-up-adventureland-scott-adams-1980&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ahopeful.wordpress.com&#x2F;2020&#x2F;09&#x2F;13&#x2F;digging-up-adventu...</a><p>If you tried to implement a game like that directly in a language like BASIC you would be driven nuts because that kind of game is fundamentally &quot;object oriented&quot; in that there are a number of things like rooms and items that are all mostly the same except they are different in some ways and trying to code that with IF, THEN and ELSE is bad enough even before GOTO gets added to the mix.  The thing is that GOTO becomes quite benign and even useful when it is used to implement interpreters.<p>So back in the day you would study systems like that to stretch your skills,  today I would look at compilers and related technology,  like the Jena rules engine.