Maintainable

Ben Halpern - Adventures In Open Sourcing Your Existing Application

Apr 18, 2022

47:32

Robby has a chat with Ben Halpern, the creator of Dev.to and a Co-Founder of Forem, a platform that Dev.to is based on. Ben shares from his experience, that well-maintained software needs to have a clear purpose and context that’s available as one is reading it and within the documentation as needed while also being flexible for future evolution. When it comes to dealing with the common challenge of naming variables and functions when we write, Ben says a glossary is fundamentally important.

He then introduces us to Dev.to, shares the story of how they opted to open source the underlying platform, and what they needed to be ready to share it with the public. He also talks about how that open source software evolved out of Dev.to and became a core aspect of their financial success. Ben advises engineers to avoid overcorrecting each time they start up a new software project.

And for those of us who may be considering open-sourcing our software, Ben will enlighten us on the things we should consider beforehand (In particular, security). Tune in to our conversation for that and more!