On Plug-ins and Extensible Architectures

gManZboy writes "Developers who want a flexible, configurable, IDE have long preferred plug-in architectures such as Eclipse over what they might view as the bloated, monolithic alternatives. Ever wondered how it all works? Well, ACM Queue just posted an article by someone who has worked on Eclipse since its inception, Dorian Birsan. He gives a great explanation of the Eclipse architecture as well as a thorough analysis of things to watch out for when developing or working with pure plug-in architectures."