MediaWiki architecture document/Initial ideas

This page helps structure and plan a potential chapter about MediaWiki in the Architecture of Open Source Applications book.


 * Architects look at thousands of buildings during their training, and study critiques of those buildings written by masters. In contrast, most software developers only ever get to know a handful of large programs well—usually programs they wrote themselves—and never study the great programs of history. As a result, they repeat one another's mistakes rather than building on one another's successes.


 * This book's goal is to change that. In it, the authors of twenty-five open source applications explain how their software is structured, and why. What are each program's major components? How do they interact? And what did their builders learn during their development? In answering these questions, the contributors to this book provide unique insights into how they think.

Questions to answer
See MediaWiki architecture document/How and why/questions

Sources to review
Current
 * Manual:Code
 * Localisation
 * PHP configuration
 * Requests for comment
 * MediaWiki on Wikipedia
 * Category:MediaWiki components

Historical content
 * Release notes
 * One-pass parser
 * m:Category:Category:MediaWiki archives
 * m:Main causes of lag
 * PHPTal
 * User_talk:Brion_VIBBER
 * w:MediaWiki version history

(and associated talk pages)