# aosabook/500lines

500 Lines or Less

Repository: https://github.com/aosabook/500lines
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/500lines
Language: JavaScript
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Last push: 2023-08-19T11:18:34+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4686, "days_push": 1110, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 29574, forks 5811 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:53.557698+00:00)

## What it is
The source repository for the book '500 Lines or Less', the fourth volume in the Architecture of Open Source Applications series. Each chapter walks through a small program (at most 500 lines of code) that solves a canonical software engineering problem, explaining design decisions and tradeoffs.

## Use cases
- learn how compilers, databases, and spreadsheets work by reading small implementations
- study software architecture and design tradeoffs
- find educational code examples for teaching programming
- understand how experienced engineers structure small programs
- learn by reading well-crafted minimal codebases

## When to choose
- you want to learn software design through small, readable real examples
- you are teaching or self-studying software architecture
- you want canonical problems (compilers, databases, spreadsheets) explained from scratch

## When to avoid
- you need production-ready, maintained software
- you want comprehensive large-scale system documentation
- you need a library or tool to integrate into a project

## Facets
- artifact type: learning-resource
- maturity: maintenance
- function: developer-tools, documentation
- domain: education, developer-tools, tutorials, programming-languages
- platform: cross-platform
- tags: book, open-source-architecture, software-design, educational-code, aosa

## Member repositories
- aosabook/500lines (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:53.557698+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T16:52:55.168056+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/aosabook/500lines (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:53.557698+00:00, sha a398c9e4e706)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.