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Ten Years at Google

neil.fraser.name

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Re: Ten Years at Google

#11

Post by BucketSort »

hacker_9 wrote: post #10
bootload wrote: post #5

"My biggest contribution so far at Google has been Blockly." Nice - https://developers.google.com/blockly/ no real fan of google, but the tools and code churned out by individuals there is pretty interesting. This I will play with.

Blockly is awesome and often overlooked. It realises the idea of a real time scripting language, and should really be the thing devs reach for over flowcharts when they decide to implement a visual programming environment.

I completely disagree. I think it looks horrible and cluttered and wouldn't like to look at a complex version of this over flowcharts.

Re: Ten Years at Google

#12

Post by mikebay »

Let me ask from anybody who works in google ?

How do you feel to work in company that spy people, broke people's privacy, hide search results, delete peoples accounts, censors opinions and youtube channels ?

Haha, google ? - no thanks

Re: Ten Years at Google

#13

Post by guelo »

bootload wrote: post #5

"My biggest contribution so far at Google has been Blockly." Nice - https://developers.google.com/blockly/ no real fan of google, but the tools and code churned out by individuals there is pretty interesting. This I will play with.

Comparing the JavaScript vs blockly sample on that page I feel that the javascript would be much more readable even for a total newbie.

Re: Ten Years at Google

#14

Post by jamesroseman »

guelo wrote: post #13
bootload wrote: post #5

"My biggest contribution so far at Google has been Blockly." Nice - https://developers.google.com/blockly/ no real fan of google, but the tools and code churned out by individuals there is pretty interesting. This I will play with.

Comparing the JavaScript vs blockly sample on that page I feel that the javascript would be much more readable even for a total newbie.

As someone with a few years in the industry who's currently volunteering to help teach high school kids coding for the first time -- you have no idea how easily code confuses newbies.

Take even the smallest snippet:

while (Count To you or me, this is pretty obvious. I've had kids ask me questions I'd never have thought of because I know this stuff already:

* What do the parentheses mean? * What is Count, is it a Javascript thing? * Is Count being set to 3? (I'm with you, the Blockly stuff is hardly legible to me. But to kids learning this for the first time, I can tell you from first hand experience the color/shape/block aspect makes a huge difference.

Re: Ten Years at Google

#15

Post by thomasahle »

bootload wrote: post #5

"My biggest contribution so far at Google has been Blockly." Nice - https://developers.google.com/blockly/ no real fan of google, but the tools and code churned out by individuals there is pretty interesting. This I will play with.

Something I thought about while looking at this: How come the code is made "material", but the variables and "objects" of the code are still abstract/just named? Have anybody thought about how to make the data objects more real as well?

Re: Ten Years at Google

#16

Post by bootload »

BucketSort wrote: post #11
hacker_9 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blockly is awesome and often overlooked. It realises the idea of a real time scripting language, and should really be the thing devs reach for over flowcharts when they decide to implement a visual programming environment.

I completely disagree. I think it looks horrible and cluttered and wouldn't like to look at a complex version of this over flowcharts.

"it looks horrible and cluttered and wouldn't like to look at a complex version of this over flowcharts"

You are right.

It looks horrible and cluttered and could be made better. Though visuals and design aside, the idea is sound. There is a real barrier b/w textual/visual in software. You don't see this in other physical disciplines like EE.

It would be interesting to have a better (easier to read, standardised etc.) version of these flow charts. Not impossible and possibly easier to trace, explain and see alternatives/improvements in design.

Re: Ten Years at Google

#17

Post by sabujp »

Someone had built an open source graphical Perl code generator that used blocks very similar to this. Looking back in your blog you used to be a heavy Perl programmer. Was it you that did that? Where's that original project, iirc it used to be on sf or something.

Re: Ten Years at Google

#18

Post by op00to »

The title of the article is very misleading. I would have loved to read how Google changed on the inside over the last 10 years. Or maybe even how the author changed. Instead, we get some spam about some tool that is neat.

Re: Ten Years at Google

#19

Post by ANH »

op00to wrote: post #18

The title of the article is very misleading. I would have loved to read how Google changed on the inside over the last 10 years. Or maybe even how the author changed. Instead, we get some spam about some tool that is neat.

I can't tell if you're parodying HN here. This is from someone's blog and is a personal reflection on his most important work of the past 10 years. Do you expect everyone to be an historian?

Re: Ten Years at Google

#20

Post by binarytransform »

Correct me if I'm wrong. Here of all places on the internet, an article with the title of "Ten Years at X" is expected to encapsulate some kind of intellectually rigorous narrative about the passing and the meaning of those 10 years to both the author and the organization. Or are we to assume that such standards no longer exist in order to receive upvotes on HN?
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