Moriel Schottlender: The Challenges of Modernizing MediaWiki's Monolith
Welcome to another engaging episode of the Maintainable Software Podcast! In this episode, Robby sits down with Moriel Schottlender, Principal Software Engineer at the Wikimedia Foundation, to explore the complex journey of modernizing MediaWiki, the software behind Wikipedia. Moriel shares her insights on what it takes to keep an enormous monolithic codebase maintainable while supporting an ever-growing and diverse set of global users. She highlights the importance of modularization, ownership, and the delicate balance between flexibility and stability in open-source software.
[00:00:51] Characteristics of Well-Maintained Software: Moriel discusses the three crucial characteristics of well-maintained software: ownership, modularization, and documentation.
[00:01:09] Ownership and Rules for Contribution: Ownership goes beyond just fixing bugs—it involves understanding the architectural purpose and maintaining consistency even as teams change.
