Reading the Standard Library for Fun

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The standard library is the best-reviewed code most of us will ever have free access to, and almost nobody reads it. I’ve started treating it like a museum you’re allowed to touch — pick one function, follow it all the way down, and notice every decision that isn’t the obvious one.

sort.Slice is not quicksort #

If you’d asked me to implement sort.Slice, I’d have written quicksort and moved on. Go’s implementation is a pattern-defeating quicksort — pdqsort — and the difference is a catalogue of the ways plain quicksort betrays you in production.

reading-code on semikolan

Reading the Standard Library for Fun

sort.Slice is not quicksort #