Second this; Postgres codebase is what got me out of the "good code is self documenting" nonsense. For those of us in the database space it is an incredible resource - and overall a great example of good code.
sqlite is much less complex, but similarly approachable.
In more recent examples, I think you see a lot of this same reader-centric pragmatic ethos in many Go projects. The Kubernetes codebase comes to mind as a very large tome that remains approachable. And the Go stdlib, of course.
Java generally falls on the opposite side, but there are counterexamples. A lot of Martin Thompsons code eschews Java "best practices" in favor of good code. Seeing competent people in the Java space "break the rules" helps.. though of course Java is forever hampered by having internalized illegible patterns as best practices in the first place.
It's a shame because at least the OpenJDK implementation of the standard library in Java is generally quite good, especially around the concurrency parts. Clean, easy to follow, reasonable comments. But of course that's Java written by C developers, mostly.
sqlite is much less complex, but similarly approachable.
In more recent examples, I think you see a lot of this same reader-centric pragmatic ethos in many Go projects. The Kubernetes codebase comes to mind as a very large tome that remains approachable. And the Go stdlib, of course.
Java generally falls on the opposite side, but there are counterexamples. A lot of Martin Thompsons code eschews Java "best practices" in favor of good code. Seeing competent people in the Java space "break the rules" helps.. though of course Java is forever hampered by having internalized illegible patterns as best practices in the first place.
It's a shame because at least the OpenJDK implementation of the standard library in Java is generally quite good, especially around the concurrency parts. Clean, easy to follow, reasonable comments. But of course that's Java written by C developers, mostly.