Engineer at Mapbox, creator of Leaflet, open source enthusiast, algorithms geek, speaker, singer-songwriter (Obiymy Doschu), father of twin girls, Ukrainian
Describing a set of simple core principles and goals of a project from the start helps a lot (e.g. in a readme or a contributing file). For Leaflet, the goal was to create the simplest, fastest and lightest mapping library that anyone could use — it's easy to align decisions with a simple, measurable goal like this (even if you have to reject contributions sometimes).
It's also important to keep a project focused — a small library that covers 90% of use cases in a specific, narrowly defined area is orders of magnitude easier to maintain than a big one that tries to cover 100%. That means learning to reduce the scope, say no to new features, and proactively work on simplifying the project.
Describing a set of simple core principles and goals of a project from the start helps a lot (e.g. in a
readmeor acontributingfile). For Leaflet, the goal was to create the simplest, fastest and lightest mapping library that anyone could use — it's easy to align decisions with a simple, measurable goal like this (even if you have to reject contributions sometimes).It's also important to keep a project focused — a small library that covers 90% of use cases in a specific, narrowly defined area is orders of magnitude easier to maintain than a big one that tries to cover 100%. That means learning to reduce the scope, say no to new features, and proactively work on simplifying the project.
Thanks!