As a demonstration program, we expect to add features continually. The program must be designed so new requirements can be met without breaking the underlying architecture. As a learning tool, we'll probably release the source code, so we can count on developers who are not familiar with its intricacies being called upon to tinker with it. We will want to be very careful about documentation, making this project easy to maintain and upgrade as time goes on.
Since this project will be used as a demonstration, it is imperative that it be reliable and robust. It would be very bad to give away this program as an advertisement of our skills and then have it crash when the customer tries to run it. It should be possible to let Phish run day and night on your computer without it ever crashing and without it interfering with your other system resources. It should be light on its feet, nimble and small.