[underbrush]

I agree that it is an exaggeration to call it the greatest pieces of engineering of our time. Still there are many technologies that are well liked but haven't developed in many years. There are many technologies that are here today but severely limited. And there are many technologies which promises potential for something better in the future. There are very few pieces of software that are here today and ticks a lot of the boxes of computer science. That are open source, cross-platform, extensible and has a modern stack.

> browser engines (unfortunately)

I often wish it wasn't so but the reality is that a shit ton of development has gone into browsers and in many cases other areas just aren't comparable. Even more so considering most resources go into proprietary technologies.

> reverse engineering proprietary hardware/firmware

As as side note reverse engineering hardware can certainly be very hard. It is also something that can gather far more credit than it probably should compared to actually engineering a solution in the first place.

[hnlmorg]

> There are very few pieces of software that are here today and ticks a lot of the boxes of computer science. That are open source, cross-platform, extensible and has a modern stack.

Open source: there’s loads. I’m very surprised to read that comment here of all places. But even if we take your comment at face value, licensing has naff all to do with engineering impressiveness.

Cross platform: again I’d beg to differ there there aren’t many. And again I’d also like to point out that something not being cross platform doesn’t negate it being impressive engineering.

Extensible: this is another metric you’ve added that I disagree is a requirement

Used a modern stack: this absolutely shouldn’t matter when one talks about “of all time” like the GP was. Otherwise you’re intentionally skewing the results to only include recent developments.

> I often wish it wasn't so but the reality is that a shit ton of development has gone into browsers and in many cases other areas just aren't comparable.

The point of the GPs tangent was comparing all software engineering.

Sure, if you say VSCode is the greatest software engineering project of all time then suffix that comment with a dozen footnotes describing a dozen exclusions to the scope, then the claim might be more reasonable. But that wasn’t what the GP said and nor is it then “greatest”.

Frankly though, I wouldn’t even extend that description of his to modern IDEs specifically, let alone the broader context they intended.