Ask HN: Have you ever seen a perfect codebase?

In my experience even the best software projects have a few skeletons in their closet, blemishes on an otherwise well-built project.

At the end of the day, we all have to build things that simply work and provide business value. Striving for perfect code is not the goal. But it does make me wonder: does perfect software even exist? If not, what's the gold standard?

9 points | by mcdow 1 day ago

12 comments

  • codingdave 20 hours ago
    The most successful products I've worked on have had the worst codebases. Seriously scary brittle legacy piles of janky code, but that met the market need perfectly and had quite a bit of success.

    The best codebases I've worked on have had brilliant teams making sure they code was elegant and as close to perfection as I've seen, but that also got thrown in the trash because they were just coding for its own sake, without bringing any actual value to the end users.

    I'm sure there are projects out there that do both product and engineering well. I just haven't seen it.

  • senfiaj 21 hours ago
    Practically I haven't seen. Either they were sloppy or there was a lot of legacy stuff (especially in big projects). If by perfect you mean 100% bug free and perfectly readable/maintainable, I don't think they exist. Even NASA's code isn't 100% bug free (~0.04 defects per KLOC vs average 15–50 defects in the industry). Exceptions might be some very small codebases. But reasonably polished / tested / maintainable codebases exist.
  • JohnFen 1 day ago
    I've never seen a perfect anything.
  • sloaken 19 hours ago
    I would like to refer you to: Gödel's incompleteness theorems

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_incompleteness_th...

  • taylodl 1 day ago
    The gold standard for a codebase isn’t perfection - it’s impact. Financially, the closest analogy is ROI minus Operating Costs: as long as that number is positive, you’re technically in good shape. But the real goal is to maximize that difference. For internal systems, that means pairing high ROI with high Business Impact Value.

    The hidden danger? ‘Skeletons in the closet’ - technical debt, brittle architecture, poor documentation - inflate Operating Costs over time. They erode ROI silently, turning what looked like a strong investment into a liability. A truly great codebase isn’t just functional; it’s engineered to minimize those skeletons.

  • PaulHoule 1 day ago
    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check
  • harryquach 1 day ago
    I don't think its possible to define what a perfect codebase would look like let alone write one. Programming is enough of an art form that quantitative analysis will always fall short. This also happens to be one of the reasons I love to write software.
  • l___l 1 day ago
    I've seen a perfect codebase. It models the problem well, is easy to understand, and has tests for all inputs.
  • nis0s 1 day ago
    I personally like uv
  • Fizzadar 1 day ago
    I don’t think it exists. An empty folder perhaps. Guaranteed bug free.
    [-]
    • shoo 1 day ago
      Provided your set of functional requirements is the empty set. If there are any requirements then an empty folder is going to have some serious functional defects.
  • propablythrown 46 minutes ago
    [dead]
  • dtnewman 19 hours ago
    This python code comes pretty close:

    ```

    # main.py

    if __name__=="__main__": print("This code is not useful")

    ```

    /s