Cathedral and the Bazaar

My favorite lesson from the Cathedral and the Bazaar is “Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse).” Part of me always wants to feel some type of complete ownership over what I write and create - however, learning computer science and completing projects for school and work have taught me to appreciate the opposite. Oftentimes I find myself wasting time trying to invent a solution that already exists, if not at least a variation. I’ve learned that there’s value in building upon these existing solutions, not only to save time but also to learn from others. The class discussion is an experience that us CS students unfortunately lack in most of our courses throughout undergrad so I really appreciated that we got to listen to others speak on their experiences with coding and thoughts on the essay.

Group Stand Ups/My Group’s Progress

I enjoyed getting a look into other groups’ progress. It showed me the range and variety that exists within open source projects - the types of issues, communication channels, goals, etc. I was really interested in Jarvis as it seems like something I’d enjoy having myself. For my group, we’ve had a meeting with a developer and designer to discuss the table issue that was assigned to us. It’s going to take a little more communication and learning to understand how their data is stored so we can make the connection between front end and back end. We plan to get started on actually coding this week.