An old publication more relevant now than ever - The Cathedral and the Bazaar. A comparison of software practices in the early 2000s with some retrospective to how great software is built.
I think much of the writing can be applied to today's federated content models.
In particular:
- The Mail Must Get Through
- Necessary Preconditions for the Bazaar Style
- The Importance of Having Users
But also this for balance:
A Generation Lost In The Bazaar https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2349257
I honestly read this every year. There are some deep lessons there that are so important for software and product development in general. It gets better every time I read it.
Is there a place that has a list of classic programming articles like this? Such a fun read. I know PHK has another one of the design of Varnish vs Squid here https://varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/phk/notes.html