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Comment by sgbeal | Hacker News Reader

> In conclusion, good code is rarely read.

i offer the entirety of sqlite as a counter-example. Based on that project's forum traffic and my participation within that project, i estimate that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people who actively read that project's C code. That doesn't make it "bad code," that just makes it code which people want to understand (which, in turn, requires reading).

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The assertion was "good code is rarely read."

    good code ⇒ rarely read

In that context, "often-read code" does not tell us anything about code quality. And often-read code that's not bad is not a defeater.

On the contrary.

A = "good code"; B = "rarely read"; C = "often read"

A implies B

B is exclusive with C

X leading to C implies X is not A

Btw this is called "contrapositive"

But is it good?

It's generally held up as the standard codebase that you can go read to learn how to write "good C", so community consensus appears to be yes.

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