I have been reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_code, but it is not obvious to me why 4b5b and 8b10b are called line code. What is the fundamental difference between line code and more sophisticated hamming code?
What is the fundamental difference between line code and more sophisticated hamming code?
They're both serving entirely different purposes.
A line code enables clock recovery on a single, serial bit stream and provides bit-level synchronization. It may also provide byte-level synchronization. On differential electrical cabling, the line code (often in combination with a scrambler) also needs to remove DC bias.
A hamming code adds redundant bits for forward error correction.