Reading 07: The Cathedral and the Bazaar
In The Cathedral and the Bazaar , Eric S. Raymond (ESR) explores two distinct software development models: the cathedral and the bazaar. ESR describes the cathedral as “carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no beta to be released before its time”. ESR saw this approach to development as better for more complex problems, such as the larger tools he had developed in the 90’s, and it encompasses much of what I have seen in my short tenure as a software developer in the real world. For every project I have worked on, there has been a project lead with (mostly) absolute power over its process and result. In my experience, the cathedral model has been effective at keeping teams on task, but it also keeps the project rigid in scope and prevents some great ideas from coming to fruition. I see less collaborations between teams with reasonably consistent results. ESR describes the bazaar model of software development as “a great b