Code Design Methods

• "Modularity of code. If I had to rank these attributes(for a successful open source project), modularity might well take the number one spot. It is critical to a project's success that it scale well, both in terms of functionality (and the code that goes with it) and in terms of outside contributions. Apache has been phenomenally successful, at least in part, because the core web server is kept so small with various other pieces (Cocoon, Lenya, Geronimo, etc.) serving as separate but integrated (or, rather, integrate-able) extensions. Linux? The kernel is kept small, and is expanded through classes, etc. Mozilla? Same thing - plug-ins, themes, and extensions. Good projects lower the bar to outside participation, and modularity is at the very heart of this principle. Even Microsoft is getting the modularity religion, as Jim Allchin recently told the WSJ."

Posted by Matt Asay (on the web) on October 1, 2005 07:14 AM

• Document everything well! This means if you add new code or just fix a one line bug please let everyone know about it and your reasons why and document the code. Think as you reread your documentation, "If I were hit by a bus today, would the next person to read this documentation know what I was doing and why?" The more years I have coded the more I realize how important this is. Going back to stuff I wrote ten years ago is like reading code by a Martian. It was good code, but how could I have thought this way? What was I doing? Good documentation saved my butt more than once.

Posted by Douglas E Knapp on May 6, 2007