Examples of great software design and implementation
I hope this isn't a duplicate...
What is the most solidly designed and implemented software system/framework/application that you've come across?
It seems like TDD, SOLID principles, OO design patterns, and things like that can be easily theorized on podcasts and blogs using really simple examples, but it's hard to imagine developing large systems that fully live up to these standards, without an explosion of code. At my company, doing full TDD seems almost out of the question with our time constraints.
If anyone can point me to any good open-source projects, I'd really like to dig in and see what good TDD/SOLID/etc. looks like. Thanks.
Answer
The Space Shuttle software?
But how much work the software does is not what makes it remarkable. What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors.