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Software Engineering at Google

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Re: Software Engineering at Google

#11

Post by teen »

kortilla wrote: post #9

If you’re interested in becoming a software engineer or are junior, do not read this and cargo cult it because many of these things will not be good practices for 99.99% of the industry. Google has custom tooling, custom kernels, custom hardware, etc and legions of support at every layer of the stack. Complexity is not eschewed but it is rather embraced if it means some slight improvement in utilization or better loo…

as someone who worked previously at google, and went back to the start up world working with php mysql, this is not true at all

Re: Software Engineering at Google

#12

Post by thelean12 »

kortilla wrote: post #9

If you’re interested in becoming a software engineer or are junior, do not read this and cargo cult it because many of these things will not be good practices for 99.99% of the industry. Google has custom tooling, custom kernels, custom hardware, etc and legions of support at every layer of the stack. Complexity is not eschewed but it is rather embraced if it means some slight improvement in utilization or better loo…

> Google places very little emphasis on things like code readability and testability.

Why do you say this? I've seen the opposite.

I can't submit untested code or code that doesn't have "readability" approval. It's certainly not perfect but testability is a huge part of any project I've worked on.

Re: Software Engineering at Google

#13

Post by nostromo »

akavel wrote: post #5
KerryJones wrote: post #2

I see a lot of upvotes -- has anyone read this? Is it actually good?

I think in such cases it's because people probably use upvotes as bookmarks to "read later" ( ...some day, for sure! )

Just so people know, you can use "favorite" for that.

You can also favorite comments.

Re: Software Engineering at Google

#16

Post by packetslave »

KerryJones wrote: post #2

I see a lot of upvotes -- has anyone read this? Is it actually good?

Upvoted based on the authors (and will definitely be reading)...

Titus is both on the C++ standards committee and did a ton of work working on C++ style and core libraries when I was there.

Hyrum was the king of large-scale refactoring and had (IIRC) more than billion lines of code changed and millions of CLs submitted across all of google by the time I left.

Re: Software Engineering at Google

#17

Post by twitch-chat »

thelean12 wrote: post #12
kortilla wrote: post #9

If you’re interested in becoming a software engineer or are junior, do not read this and cargo cult it because many of these things will not be good practices for 99.99% of the industry. Google has custom tooling, custom kernels, custom hardware, etc and legions of support at every layer of the stack. Complexity is not eschewed but it is rather embraced if it means some slight improvement in utilization or better loo…

> Google places very little emphasis on things like code readability and testability. Why do you say this? I've seen the opposite. I can't submit untested code or code that doesn't have "readability" approval. It's certainly not perfect but testability is a huge part of any project I've worked on.

Not to mention a lot of the open source stuff at Google like Chromium or Android is very readable.

Re: Software Engineering at Google

#18

Post by alarge »

kortilla wrote: post #9

If you’re interested in becoming a software engineer or are junior, do not read this and cargo cult it because many of these things will not be good practices for 99.99% of the industry. Google has custom tooling, custom kernels, custom hardware, etc and legions of support at every layer of the stack. Complexity is not eschewed but it is rather embraced if it means some slight improvement in utilization or better loo…

Chiming in here to agree with the others. In particular, finding simple, understandable solutions to complex problems is highly valued at Google. Complex solutions are an anti-pattern.

And the comment about readability and testability is so far different from my experience that I have to wonder where the poster is getting their information. Google code reviews have to be among the most nit-picky I've ever seen in a 30+ year career, with serious attention to detail all the way down to punctuation in comments.

Re: Software Engineering at Google

#19

Post by [deleted] »

kortilla wrote: post #9

If you’re interested in becoming a software engineer or are junior, do not read this and cargo cult it because many of these things will not be good practices for 99.99% of the industry. Google has custom tooling, custom kernels, custom hardware, etc and legions of support at every layer of the stack. Complexity is not eschewed but it is rather embraced if it means some slight improvement in utilization or better loo…

[deleted]

Re: Software Engineering at Google

#20

Post by Lammy »

teen wrote: post #11
kortilla wrote: post #9

If you’re interested in becoming a software engineer or are junior, do not read this and cargo cult it because many of these things will not be good practices for 99.99% of the industry. Google has custom tooling, custom kernels, custom hardware, etc and legions of support at every layer of the stack. Complexity is not eschewed but it is rather embraced if it means some slight improvement in utilization or better loo…

as someone who worked previously at google, and went back to the start up world working with php mysql, this is not true at all

How is it not? Seems like simple economics to me. Something like maintaining a custom kernel distribution takes ${x} amount of engineer time for ${y} amount of “savings” (better perf, custom patches, nonstandard features, whatever). Why bother until you have a fleet of machines large enough for y to be greater than x?
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