Architects look at thousands of buildings during their training, and study critiques of those buildings written by masters. In contrast, most software developers only ever get to know a handful of large programs well Ñ usually programs they wrote themselves Ñ and never study the great programs of history. As a result, they repeat one anotherÕs mistakes rather than building on one anotherÕs successes.
This bookÕs goal is to change that. In it, the authors of twenty-five open source applications explain how their software is structured, and why. What are each program's major components? How do they interact? And what did their builders learn during their development? In answering these questions, the contributors to this book provide unique insights into how they think.