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Guido worked almost alone on Python for a good 5 years. The best ideas are made by 1-3 people. I agree dont' go dark, but coding by community/design by commit

Guido worked almost alone on Python for a good 5 years. The best ideas are made by 1-3 people. I agree dont' go dark, but coding by community/design by committee can be horrible on the other extreme. At a certain point projects can be ready for more collaboration, at a certain point they are too young and might get spoiled by project wreckers. Showing incomplete code/systems to the wrong people (i.e. non programmers in many cases) can be the death of good ideas. Look it up, find your favorite tool, platform, language etc, I guarantee you there is 1-3 guys that made it happen at the first iteration at least.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
The first iteration is not what "don't go dark" is about. The aphorism refers to releases 2, 3.. N, where the code you're writing needs to mesh with the expectations, needs, and codebase of other people. Sure, if you haven't released your code yet and you have no users, you can be as dark as you like. You can change your API on a whim. Nobody cares! There's still a risk, of course -- the risk that you're wasting time developing something that everyone else will just ignore -- but that's just your problem. The problem with "going dark" after the initial release is that it causes trouble not just for you, but for everyone else whose work depends on your work.