linuxpimp20

hi i've read that reading good source code can help you become a better programmer and was wondering if anyone knew of a open source program that is coded really well for a beginner to read. I'm familar with C and C++. thanks for any replies in advance.

Pizentios

for C and C++ you have a insane number of choices.

why not just check out some of the projects on sourceforge or on freashmeat?

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linuxpimp20

that's why. lol. there is so many to choose from that i didn't know if someone already knew if there was one that was well written that they have had experience with. I don't want to stumble upon a badly written one if i can help it. That would be counter productive.

jim mcnamara

IMO - some of those projects are not beginner fodder or are written by beginners.

You could download source code for Linux glibc or coreutils (command line utilities)
For example some Debian Linux stuff is here:

http://www.linux-m32r.org/eng/download.html

Infinite Recursion

how about gaim?

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Pizentios

yeah gaim is probably a good place to start as it is a very good app :-)

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linuxpimp20

well gaim seemd like a decent start so i started with that. In the source tree was a file called HACKING where the author tries to explain the code somewhat so those who are curious will have an easier time with it. Doing so i stumbled on some topics to read up on like event driven programming, asychonous I/O, etc so already i've learned a bit. The author said that a lot of the code is GTK so i started reading a tutorial on that and will delve into that more because i figure it will help me read more program code easier. I had a question tho about continuing to read the Gaim code. Do you think it would be too complicated for a beginner because it is networked? How much would i need to know about sockets and protocols and such or is it a good way to stumble across them and learn as i go? thanks for your replies again.

mackenga

Network programming isn't really all that complicated. For a guide to sockets from C, you could do worse than take a look at Beej's guide (the first encounter I had with BSD sockets, way back when).

http://www.ecst.csuchico.edu/~beej/guide/net/

A good book on the subject is "Unix Network Programming" by W. Richard Stevens if you prefer a big wodge of paper.

It's essentially a very simple API though - much less to it than Gtk - and it should take you no time to get to grips with it. Accessing the API is usually very similar from different languages (as you'd hope) so once you can do sockets in C, you'll be able to learn to use them from Tcl and Perl and so on very quickly.

Best of luck!

Ooble

Has the author of gaim split the GUI and networking code yet?

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linuxpimp20

i dunno. i haven't taken the time to look at the actual code yet. i decided i'd go back and take a look at it after getting familar with GTK