I’ve been doing some web work lately using a relatively new javascript library called “jQuery“. It’s lightweight, simple, and powerful. It’s also got a growing community of developers continuing to enhance and extend it.
Yesterday, I came across a side project someone was doing - “date picker” (click on an icon, up pops an interactive calendar, you select a date, date fills in on a form). I was in need of something like that, so I gave it a longer look. I found that, although it was really neat, there were some things that I thought could have been done better, or make it easier to use. So I posted my comments to a mailing list. 4 or 5 other people agreed with me, and added their own suggestions.
Less than 24 hours later, the author wrote back to the mailing list with another link to his work - and the majority of the suggestions were done and implemented! The ones he didn’t include, he explained why he left them out.
So, while the “group” didn’t necessarily get in there and write the code, the “peer review” process certainly helped the author deliver a better product. It’s still not 100% what I need for my project, but since the author shared his code with the world, I can tweak it out to suit my needs, then post those revisions back for other people to use. And so on and so forth.
Comments
No comments yet