Creating Community Around Open Source, Working With Legacy Code, Architecture Hoisting and More

LinkedIn’s publishing platform gives professionals a way to share their personal opinions about topical professional news and interests, including our engineers. Here, we regularly round up some of the best pieces written recently by LinkedIn engineers.

"Building Communities"
By Todd Palino, Staff Site Reliability Engineer at LinkedIn
Todd discusses how creating an open and welcoming community is essential to the success and continued development of open source projects. He argues that accepting feedback from others, encouraging discussion, and treating even basic questions or trivial concerns as important contributions ultimately leads to better open source projects.

"Crafting Insanity (or: Working With Legacy Code)"
By Brendan Drew, Staff Software Engineer at LinkedIn
Legacy code can drive any engineer crazy, but Brendan discusses how having a measured approach toward working with legacy code can make your job – and the job of everyone else who comes in contact with it later – much easier.

"Vigilance, Guide Rails, and Architecture Hoisting"
By David Max, Senior Software Engineer at LinkedIn
Details matter. Ask the folks at NASA who lost the Mars Climate Orbiter 15 years ago because they failed to notice a difference between systems that measured in pounds and inches, rather than the metric system. The project’s failure is an example of a common conundrum in large-scale projects: How to reduce risk in a project without putting in too many constraints. David looks at “architecture hoisting” a development system that builds risk mitigation into the core code of a project.

"I Have Only One Regret: I Should Have Worked More."
By Jens Pillgram-Larsen, Senior Engineering Manager, Development Tools at LinkedIn
Work-life balance is a constant battle for nearly everyone. Jens discusses how hard work toward something you’re passionate about can actually be an incredibly enriching part of life, rather than its natural opposite.