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Anyone can be a library developer! Unfortunately no one pays library developers, so nearly every programmer is paid to be an application developer.

• dragontamer 6y ago
  The economics of application vs library programmers is a managerial decision. Any application project that starts writing library-style code will slow down, and possibly gain the scrutiny of the managers / executives. In "Large Scale C++", Lakos notes the importance of manager-level buy in. You must have a library-team, with a separate stream of money, if you expect to be sustainable. Application-style programmers trying to make a library on their own will lose the economic game. -------- "Who pays for the library??". Well, if your organization has 10 teams, all using a specific library (or that could benefit from a hypothetical library), its actually a very difficult question. This is where hierarchy and management must step in to solve the issue. No sane manager wants to spend their own money helping other teams with no recognition! Trying to write a library without solving the long-term economic and managerial issues is suicide. You'll only slow down your own application and make your own project look weaker compared to your peers (at least in the short term. In the long term, the library code will blossom and make your team more productive. But surviving the short term is a major concern in reality)
• skrebbel 6y ago
  > Unfortunately no one pays library developers Shameless plug: We're hiring at talkjs.com. Our entire product is essentially a library. Also, back on topic, our tests never go stale because we promise full backward compat to our customers, no matter what. Solves a big part of the downsides of TDD or other approaches that yield lots of tests.