Good Open Source Code to learn Web Programming [closed]

Question

Hi can someone point me to some Good Open Source Code to learn Web Programming (Language doesn't matter).

i'm looking for source code of web-applications not frameworks

I'm not a beginner, I can code to some extent. I want to know how stuffs are done in real world applications.

Answer 1

If I understand you correctly, you want to study the code of popular open source web applications to understand how 'real world, live, popular' applications are coded.

If that is so, I recommend the following popular, open source applications:

• Wordpress - coded with PHP, this application is a very popular blog management system

• Text Pattern - coded with PHP, this application is similar to wordpress but slightly more advanced.

• CGI Module - coded with Perl, this perl module is used in most perl based web applications. Understanding the code of this module will give you great insights on a part of how the internet works.

• SQLAlchemy - coded with Python, is a popular application in the python community to interface / interact with databases.

It would be easier if you familiarize yourself with one of these languages well before you try to understand the working of any of the above.

Answer 2

Learning by reading the source code of an open source application always seemed like a good idea, but every time I tried it, it was a futile effort. I think that's because there's three general types of open source apps, and none are good to read for learning's sake:

1. The small projects. By small, I mean "almost not a project" small. For one reason or another, these never made it past the proof of concept phase. Either the ideas weren't interesting enough, or worse, the programmer(s) weren't good enough to translate it into a ready-for-prime-time app. Often, the ability of these programmers aren't significantly greater than your current level, so these aren't worth your time studying.
2. The medium-small projects. These projects are big enough to be interesting and sophisticated, but the publicly-available technical documentation is severely lacking and you'll never make heads or tails of their architecture. You could email the contributors, but they're probably too busy dividing their time between a high-level paid day job and committing all their personal time to this pet project. Moving on...
3. The big time projects. E.g. Firefox, Eclipse, etc. Software in this category is meticulously documented, but it doesn't matter, because the amount of time required to read and understand it all is prohibitive. You'd have to be mad to put yourself through that unless you're working on the project (and hopefully getting paid to do it!).

I don't mean to dissuade you, this is just my personal experience. If you want to become a better programmer, focus on finding a job. The pace of learning during my first year on the job was orders of magnitude greater than any work I did on my own.