Craftsmanship, some say programing is about about craftsmanship. I'd say thats not entirely true. There is a TON of code out there that just works. And thats fine and all. But there is also code which is the result of carefull craftsmanship. It's the type of code that you work with which makes some difficult task so easy and elegant that when compared to the difficulties of other programing tasks truly stands out head and shoulder about the rest.

Thats what this article is about, the libraries that are true works of craftsmanship.

Configurable Math Library
A great 3D math library which can easily be tailored to whatever format your choosen system uses.
www.cmldev.net

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Simple and Fast Multimedia Library
A platform abstraction layer handling Window creation, timing, networking, user input, threads, and more all in a nice Object Oriented, cross-platform manner. It stands far above the rest in ease of use. I can't say enough good things about this library.
sfml.sourceforge.net

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irrKlang
An extreemly powerfull, cross platform sound library. Like any good design, the power is hidden unless you need to access it which makes this one of the easiest sound libraries to use that I have seen.
www.ambiera.com/irrklang

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RakNet
A network library providing the functionality seen only in large production games.
www.jenkinssoftware.com

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Open Dynamics Engine
A Physics engine so well put together that NASA used it when simulating tests for the Mars Rovers. The best thing? It's still easy to implement.
www.ode.org