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Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

sachin.posterous.com

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Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#71

Post by andreyf »

refulgentis wrote: post #40
larsberg wrote: post #27

This article, like many others, seems to overestimate how large the actual numbers of developers is at Microsoft, as opposed to full teams with Test and mgmt and their associated marketing, sales, etc. organizations. The .NET GC was roughly 1 person (sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more). Most of the base class libraries were one person. Even larger things, like the text editor, were usually a senior pers…

Not to be obtuse, or maybe miss the joke, but how can you sometimes have a little less than 1 person working on one of the most important parts of your runtime? Sounds like a bug more than a feature to me. :)

how can you sometimes have a little less than 1 person working on one of the most important parts of your runtime?

You make sure that person knows a lot about garbage collectors? If he's implemented garbage collectors before and is up-to-date on GC research, there's no reason one person couldn't implement it alone.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#72

Post by Setsuna »

"Maybe that's the problem at Microsoft: they think they can solve problems by throwing lots of people at them."

Does the author provide anything to support this claim? and seriously, I wonder why every pro-apple author couldn't resist the urge to belittle other companies. No company is "perfect".

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#73

Post by Setsuna »

mcritz wrote: post #30

Maybe if Apple had more people they could make Mobile Me work like it should, release a new Mac Pro more frequently than once every two years, have a 64bit completely multithreaded Final Cut Pro written in Cocoa APIs, or something something antenna something…

Just because something can be done doesn't necessarily mean it has to be done.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#74

Post by blasdel »

blhack wrote: post #15

downvoters: Sorry if this question was offensive; I'm asking about if the "apple is like a startup" trend continues into developers being able to choose what kind of tools they want to work with. My complaining about my MBP isn't meant as a critique of apple, I'm just saying that if it was me I would probably choose a linux machine, not a mac. I apologize for the off-topic question, but is anybody here a coder for ap…

Anyone who really chafes with the UI model of OS X probably wouldn't apply to work in Software at Apple, and even if one did you'd probably get rejected for other reasons.

If you're chafing on command-tab, try hitting its complement command-backtick

As for tools, you can use whatever you think is best for the job, it's just that for anything that touches the GUI the best tool is going to be Obj-C/Cocoa. In other places, the HN mindset comes out to play pretty hardcore:

  The process sandboxing engine introduced in 10.5 is an embedded LISP
  Their CalDAV and Wiki Server implementations are in Python with Twisted
  They once shipped a desktop app written in Rails. Really.
  The iTMS backend is all Java, and at least formerly used WebObjects heavily
  For a while they had a bunch of GUI Java apps written with their Java/Cocoa bridge
  They've let motivated employees write Obj-C bridges for Perl, Python, and Ruby (x2)
  The guy that wrote two Ruby bridges is now doing a native Ruby implementation
  They've got at least 3 independent javascript frameworks shipping with webapps

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#75

Post by lovskogen »

bradgessler wrote: post #7
lovskogen wrote: post #3

Because of the Remote App was written by one guy, Apple is a huge startup?

No, that's just an interesting fact from the article. I assumed they assembled a crack-team of iPhone engineers to bang this out. I was surprised that one person put together such a high-quality app, especially in a company that could afford to throw lots of money/developers/teams to solve this problem.

Then a headline á "The Remote App Was Made by One Guy" would serve the article better than the sensationalist one defining all of Apple after this one project.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#76

Post by rythie »

Is this really that surprising? It doesn't seem that complicated a project. Big companies surely don't have a team for every little project.

Wasn't the Facebook app written by one guy. Also TweetDeck was originally by one guy. Wasn't Reddit built by 4 people and Posterous basically by 2 or 3 people? And all for those apps the same people did all the business and marketing too.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#77

Post by rantfoil »

Locke1689 wrote: post #44
larsberg wrote: post #27

This article, like many others, seems to overestimate how large the actual numbers of developers is at Microsoft, as opposed to full teams with Test and mgmt and their associated marketing, sales, etc. organizations. The .NET GC was roughly 1 person (sometimes a little less, sometimes a little more). Most of the base class libraries were one person. Even larger things, like the text editor, were usually a senior pers…

I can honestly say that the Microsoft interview was the most difficult, draining 6 hours of my life. And that was for an internship -- basically interviewing to do a 3 month interview. I don't think anyone who's been on the inside would say Microsoft just "throws" developers at their problems.

How Microsoft may interview candidates has no bearing on what they may direct them to do once hired.

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#78

Post by dagw »

chc wrote: post #4
lovskogen wrote: post #3

Because of the Remote App was written by one guy, Apple is a huge startup?

No. Nobody said that. It's an example of how Apple works. Rather than having large teams with hordes of managers, Apple has a bunch of engineers who are trusted to be competent and work on whatever's needed. This way of working is more akin to a startup than a typical BigCo.

I've worked at several BigCo's and they all basically worked like that. Now admittedly non of these companies where pure software or computer companies, but still in my experience the whole "large teams with hordes of managers" seems to be very much the exception rather than the rule once you actually take a look at most companies from the inside. The only "hordes of managers" company I've actually worked at was a smallish company (around 50 employees)

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#79

Post by statictype »

blasdel wrote: post #74
blhack wrote: post #15

downvoters: Sorry if this question was offensive; I'm asking about if the "apple is like a startup" trend continues into developers being able to choose what kind of tools they want to work with. My complaining about my MBP isn't meant as a critique of apple, I'm just saying that if it was me I would probably choose a linux machine, not a mac. I apologize for the off-topic question, but is anybody here a coder for ap…

Anyone who really chafes with the UI model of OS X probably wouldn't apply to work in Software at Apple, and even if one did you'd probably get rejected for other reasons. If you're chafing on command-tab, try hitting its complement command-backtick As for tools, you can use whatever you think is best for the job, it's just that for anything that touches the GUI the best tool is going to be Obj-C/Cocoa. In other plac…

Anyone who really chafes with the UI model of OS X probably wouldn't apply to work in Software at Apple,

I don't think very highly of OS X's Desktop UI but I doubt that would stop me from wanting to work at Apple.

and even if one did you'd probably get rejected for other reasons.

Such as?

Re: Apple is run like a huge startup (and the remote app was written by 1 guy)

#80

Post by Locke1689 »

megablast wrote: post #66
Locke1689 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, not to get all defensive, but we at STB are making quite a bit of money. It's probably over a million a quarter per developer. I don't know many people who can say that. ;)

Are you only including developers, or all the people who work on a product? I imagine that MS has a rather large team of non-developers working on products as well. You want to be careful with that metric. You know the cleaners don't make much money, why not fire them?

I did actually mean all the people that work in development on the product. That is, in MS terms, all SDE, SDET, and PMs. I happen to know this figure is accurate for Windows (over a million per developer), although that doesn't include sales/marketing, administrative costs, etc. As for the cleaners comment, I don't really get your point.

Anyway, my statistic wasn't really meant to be taken that seriously, just proof that server is actually making money over here.

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