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NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

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Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#31

Post by sidlls »

svendisnigh wrote: post #29
winter_blue wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's outdated about Java/Swing? Java 8 is a fairly decent language, and Swing isn't bad. In fact the entire suite of JetBrains IDEs (WebStorm, PyCharm, IntelliJ, Android Studio, ReSharper, etc) have their UI implemented in Swing. I suppose they could have used Kotlin, Scala, Haskell, or some other more language with a more advanced type system. But it would have been truly horrible had they written their back-end i…

The issue with Java/Swing is that it limits development velocity and makes job less appealing for current employees. While HTML5/JS is not without its own problem. Yet using it over a native framework like Swing, enables the development process to leverage external knowledge (Open Source libraries, etc.). This problem is further worsened when your competitors in enterprise Business Intelligence space can leverage tho…

Hardly. I work in a company who's stack was Java from the beginning as a "scrappy startup." Some of the folks who have been here the longest are some of the first to jump on any heavyweight Enterprise Stack they can think of.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#32

Post by nitrogen »

Zigurd wrote: post #24
nitrogen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swing isn't actually bad if you have a good look-and-feel. Easier to design a Swing UI than a webapp with similar functionality.

The problem with Swing is that everything in Swing looks like a dog's breakfast and nobody under 40 knows how to use it.

The former is fixed by a solid look-and-feel, but the latter is definitely a problem (though I'm certainly under 40, I've never met another Swing dev in person and make most of my money elsewhere).

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#33

Post by Spooky23 »

tyingq wrote: post #8
bra-ket wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most likely this has nothing to do with tech, simply IBM sales guys are better at NYPD politics

The article says NYPD did the development. "group of IBM products tied together with NYPD-created software"

Smells like Watson came to town.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#34

Post by svendisnigh »

jackmott wrote: post #30
svendisnigh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with Java/Swing is that it limits development velocity and makes job less appealing for current employees. While HTML5/JS is not without its own problem. Yet using it over a native framework like Swing, enables the development process to leverage external knowledge (Open Source libraries, etc.). This problem is further worsened when your competitors in enterprise Business Intelligence space can leverage tho…

nonsense

I welcome you to start your next hot startup in 2017 using Swing/Java instead of React/React Native/Node/Ruby/Python/Go/Rust/C++ etc. The merits of the stack are determined by both intrinsic factors and the market. Ignoring the market (remember Palantir is hiring in SV / Palo Alto) you risk alienating potential hires and current employees. [1] Another great example is EHR/EMR market with Mumps etc.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Palantir-use-Java

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#35

Post by foolfoolz »

svendisnigh wrote: post #13

Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less proficient government agencies (apparently NSA was smart enough to see through the ruse). And then in turn sell the "spooky/mysterious" image to bunch of naive Stanford/Berkeley undergrads and convince them to work for peanuts. Sadly in 2017, their tech stack is falling apart, t…

I interviewed there a couple years ago. the guy forgot to call me for the phone screen. I emailed the recruiter and they said sorry they can reschedule for 7pm that night when he got home.

on the call (which started at 7:15) he talked 90% of the time. he would ask me two or three questions at a time, and when I would get a chance to answer one he would jump in and answer the rest of them for me.

I was rejected for lack of technical skills

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#36

Post by koolba »

kendallpark wrote: post #14

> The department has created a new system to replace Palantir. > The new system, named Cobalt, is a group of IBM products tied together with NYPD-created software. You really have to wonder about the quality of this internal product. From what I've gleaned about Palantir over the years, they supposedly have one of the hardest dev interview processes. People that work there are on top of their game. My gut feel is tha…

It's also possible that they don't actually have that complicated of a problem to solve. Whatever point solution they put together that is specific to their use case (which I admit I know nothing about), would be both slimmer and simpler than a generalized solution.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#37

Post by angersock »

Zigurd wrote: post #24
nitrogen wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swing isn't actually bad if you have a good look-and-feel. Easier to design a Swing UI than a webapp with similar functionality.

The problem with Swing is that everything in Swing looks like a dog's breakfast and nobody under 40 knows how to use it.

> nobody under 40 knows how to use it.

Reading the docs is a good place to learn. That's how I did it when I was under 40.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#38

Post by Retric »

freehunter wrote: post #26
svendisnigh wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can have hardest dev interview process, but that's a poor measure of ability to develop software. Palantir is just another Theranos in disguise, it essentially sells an under-performing graph database with outdated visualization tools while making money providing consulting services using "Forward Deployed (OMG!! You mean like soldiers! /s) Software Engineers".

Often a hard dev interview process is designed to week out undesirable employees, like ones who will demand vacation, time off, normal working hours, etc. I interviewed at a software place in a big engineering college town and their interview was built like a college exam and asked questions that senior-level students would know, but you'd have forgotten within a few years because you'd never use that information in…

That's not a hard interview process, it's a targeted interview process designed to accept reasonably intelegent and 'incompetent' people. Which is really how most large consulting firms operate.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#39

Post by slap_shot »

svendisnigh wrote: post #34
jackmott wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nonsense

I welcome you to start your next hot startup in 2017 using Swing/Java instead of React/React Native/Node/Ruby/Python/Go/Rust/C++ etc. The merits of the stack are determined by both intrinsic factors and the market. Ignoring the market (remember Palantir is hiring in SV / Palo Alto) you risk alienating potential hires and current employees. [1] Another great example is EHR/EMR market with Mumps etc. [1] https://www.qu…

I'm a recent founder a big data platform and a lot of our code is Java.

But better yet, we have embraced Cloud Native, so between containers and microservices it doesn't really matter what language we use.

We use Java, Python, Go, Ruby, C++ and our front end is React.

Individually, every language we use is both powerful and flawed. But together it builds a pretty amazing platform.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#40

Post by bane »

Conjecture? Palantir is known to be rabidly expensive. The available information on the internet and from people I know who've encountered the technology directly describe their "product" as a mix of a very outdated tech stack and expensive integration services with expensive on-site support [1]

My guess is that the NYPD did an analysis of the life-cycle cost of the system over another contract period, and probably determined they could do something cheaper some other way. Since they've built another system based on a competitor's technology (with some special home rolled glue sauce) they're obviously getting some benefit from the basic approach, but given a choice of close enough tech and more badges or the status-quo they've decided to move forward.

1 - I've basically heard their software described as a big graph backend with a document store and an ancient Java client for mucking around with the graph. Most of their tech has been subsumed by very free and highly scalable technologies.

The most recent video shows a just normal run-of-the-mill web app any decent team of 3 or 4 good web devs could crank out in a few weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFF4gN56Bhg

They actually don't have any video up of anything recent that actually really shows their core product. The video here shows a java client https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OYy_UtINo4 but it's from 2015.

Kind of a shame considering how much money and talent they've vacuumed out of the market. If I'm right, it's amazing for IBM to actually come in at a lower price than some competitor.

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