Do developers need to understand absolutely the entire project?

Question

Programming

I mean, if the project is very large and complex, does it mean that every developer working with it fully understands how and what works in it, or can there still be some white spots and is this normal?

Answer 1

In a large enough project, this is simply not possible. No person in the world can fully understand, for example, chromium.
If the project is normally structured, then all developers should understand approximately what each part and the overall architecture does.
But having white spots is normal if other developers are involved in the incomprehensible part, of course. You need to know your whole piece.

Answer 2

If the code is written correctly, divided into logical parts, etc. - should not. Yes, and maybe a lifetime is not enough to figure it out.
For a long time I read a book on the development of the Linux kernel (since the time of Linux 2.6). So it says that people who fully understand how the core works can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But nevertheless, this does not prevent him from actively developing to this day.

Answer 3

In theory, yes. In practice, there is a manager who distributes tasks in such a way that you can not know anything at all.

Answer 4

Ideally yes. And this ideal must be striven for. The better you know the project - the better you perform the tasks, the more money you get (if not an idiot of course).

Answer 5

OOP was invented precisely for this, so that you roughly know the project, and pick well those tasks that hang on you.

Answer 6

This can turn out to be harmful for workhorses - they will be distracted by ratsuhi)))))
Actually, all modern approaches to industrial programming make it possible to turn an individual programmer into a small cog, spinning in a very narrow area.
And a wide view (ignoring details) is already the lot of the "upper"