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Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

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Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#221

Post by zwily »

pilif wrote: post #99
sitkack wrote: post #66

> Let’s say hypothetically that Apple was dumb enough to pull a Guido van Rossum, and declare that Swift 6.0 is backwards-incompatible with Swift 5.0, much in the way that Python 3 is incompatible with Python 2. Damn, I was waiting for this. The whole essay was a setup for this paragraph. Reframes the argument using a shared traumatic experience for everyone. This humanizes the effect, we all know someone that lost s…

Apple already pulled the Python 3 stunt twice with swift. Swift 1 to Swift 2 to Swift 3 were all very much incompatible. Of course the language wasn’t as broadly used back then and Apple is known for quicker churn than Python so the need to write code compatible across Swift versions was much less pronounced

I haven’t used Swift heavily till recently, but didn’t they say from the beginning there would be lots of breaking changes in the first couple versions? Doesn’t make it less painful but they were at least up front about it.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#222

Post by rapsey »

skohan wrote: post #180
pilif wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple already pulled the Python 3 stunt twice with swift. Swift 1 to Swift 2 to Swift 3 were all very much incompatible. Of course the language wasn’t as broadly used back then and Apple is known for quicker churn than Python so the need to write code compatible across Swift versions was much less pronounced

Swift can be very painful from this perspective. I just recently had to do surgery on a project because one of my dependencies changed the tools version. The back-compat promise is one of the reasons I'm investing in Rust for new projects, even if I find the actual programming much more pleasant in Swift. But I'm a bit less optimistic about Rust now given the recent layoffs at Mozilla.

Rust is not that dependent on Mozilla

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#223

Post by scarface74 »

lowiqengineer wrote: post #8
mdrabla wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This hasn't been my experience, and I've worked there. There might've been a couple dicks like that but definitely not the norm

A "couple dicks"? It's endemic, dude. You can't be given everything you could ever dream of and _not_ end up like this. By comparison, I have nothing. zilch , for my hard work. Neither do most people working on core tech at AWS. That's why they empathize with their customers (I'm guessing).

Are you really complaining that you only make probably around a quarter million a year?

I don’t even work on the “core tech”, I am on the consulting side, probably make less than you do (albeit in a much lower cost of living area) and I am probably older. But, I am not throwing a pity party on HN

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#224

Post by scarface74 »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #145
lowiqengineer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trips to Europe or to random conferences in first class? Trips to _any office_ for "face time"? Massages? Bonuses of any sort, including peer bonuses and holiday gifts? Refreshers? Society thinking that you're "smart" for passing the loop? You're rewarded just for being alive at Google, but I get nothing but scorn and condescension. Fun fact for you - if I get promoted this year at Amazon to L5, I'll _still_ make les…

> Fun fact for you - if I get promoted this year at Amazon to L5, I'll _still_ make less than a new grad at Google. Yet you still make more than what the vast majority of engineers in western Europe will ever make in their whole career. And that's still only looking at the most developed countries. The job market isn't fair. No use getting burnt over that.

He makes far more than The vast majority of developers in the US.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#225

Post by mtlynch »

crazygringo wrote: post #202

This very long article doesn't describe even a single instance of anything GCP has deprecated. It's a long rant with a bunch of f-words, and the claim that he gets deprecation e-mails "about once a month". Can someone who is informed point to actual GCP services that have been, or are being, deprecated? From the article, I have no idea whatsoever if this is some huge actual problem with core services... or pulling su…

Python2 on AppEngine is a huge, painful Google GCP deprecation.

I have a friend who built an AppEngine app within the first year of the platform's release, and he's spent the better part of the past 9 months doing almost nothing but managing his company's migration to Python3 AppEngine.

It wasn't just migrating from Python2 to Python3 syntax. Google used it as an opportunity to also turn down tons of APIs and services they no longer felt like maintaining.

One big difference was the Users API. Python2 AppEngine had a pretty simple way to authenticate users that you could set up in an hour.[0] In Python3, they've dumped that entirely and tell you that you have to move to a totally different solution, and they offer no help with that migration.[1]

In Python2 AppEngine, you essentially got a memcache for free. The ndb library[2] allowed applications to read/write to Cloud Datastore, but it also automagically managed the cache for you so that you didn't have to set up a separate cache service. In Python3, they've dumped that and force you to maintain your own cache service and handle all the caching logic yourself.[3]

It looks like the ndb library is pretty complete at this point,[4] but when I was looking at a migration earlier this year, the ndb library wasn't even out of beta. Meanwhile, they were breathing down their customers' necks about moving off the Python2 version.

I had a fairly small (~8 KLOC) Python2 AppEngine app that I wrote in 2018, but when I realized how much of a hassle it would be to migrate to Python3, I just rewrote it using Gridsome and moved off of AppEngine entirely.[5]

[0] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/user...

[1] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/migr...

[2] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python/ndb

[3] https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/python3/mig...

[4] https://googleapis.dev/python/python-ndb/latest/index.html

[5] https://whatgotdone.com/michael/2020-04-17

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#226

Post by gumby »

CJefferson wrote: post #58
perl4ever wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, when someone expresses an opinion like this, you never know if they were contacted at some point by a Google recruiter and ended up with a case of sour grapes. I had a phone conversation with a hiring manager once, and obviously I was not the right type or class or caste or something, but it wasn't a technical screen at all, so it's a mystery to me forever what exactly determined the "in group" as…

I've never been hired or approached by Google. However, as a University lecturer I know a lot of people Google have employed. In my opinion, they have rejected some of the greatest students I have ever taught, and accepted some idiots who know how to speak well. While they have employed some good people, I believe they purposefully taret the type of people who think working at Google makes you a fundamentally better…

> In my opinion, they have rejected some of the greatest students I have ever taught, and accepted some idiots who know how to speak well.

This has been a source of angst for friends of mine at google for over 15 years, which is almost 3/4 of google’s existence. The hiring process is just random.

Part of it is due to measures put in to avoid certain unconscious biases (hire your friends, regardless of how good they are; hire only people like yourself, etc). So I have some sympathy.

But only some.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#227

Post by Aperocky »

jedberg wrote: post #219

And then there is AWS, which has depreciated exactly one service, SDB, but only after they created a much better replacement (DynamoDB) and offered to help migrate all of their large customers, so they could get the usage percent so low that almost no one was affected by the shutdown.

Disclaimer: AWS SDE

The focus on consistent behavior and once launch, never deprecate practice has caused many headaches, I personally know of control planes specifically written to accommodate old behaviors that a few customers had years ago even when the entire service has been updated. But IMO this is still much better than deprecating production services and behaviors on the fly.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#228

Post by ithkuil »

em-bee wrote: post #203
ithkuil wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it true though? Keeping your stuff up and running, patched with the latest security updates takes time. And opensource systems also break compatibility at times. Sometimes the installation/upgrade process changes over time and you need to learn how to do proper upgrades even if the software technically can be made to work with the rest of the system. It's hard to quantify, but I don't think it's so clear-cut as Ye…

well, being forced to adapt your system because a service provider is not allowing you to keep it running can be a significant drain on your resources. especially when you can't control when you do it. sure FOSS needs to be upgraded too, and sometimes there is change that you need to adapt to, but you are in control of the schedule, and if you are busy you can delay the upgrade work to when you have time for it. a se…

The timeframe is often quite different:

Google gives you 12 months notice before turning off the lights.

A FOSS tool "forces" you to upgrade when the old version you're using has a serious security issue that's is not backported. Which means that unless the supported version is fully backward compatible with your software, you have a quite tight schedule to deal with.

Sure, you always have the "option" of running insecure systems. Unfortunately a lot of people choose that "option" and severely underestimate its cost...

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#229

Post by username90 »

vmateixeira wrote: post #143
londons_explore wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but there might be other downsides... Suddenly every developer turns into 'maintenance man' just refactoring existing code to make it neater without adding much.

Increasing performance and cutting down infrastructure costs? Looks like someone deserves a bonus

Those are seen as launches at Google and are rewarded.

Re: Dear Google Cloud: Your Deprecation Policy Is Killing You

#230

Post by mips_avatar »

mdrabla wrote: post #7
lowiqengineer wrote: post #2

The answer to why this is, I’m beginning to realize after talking to dozens of Googlers working at Google as acquaintances, friends, former coworkers, HN comments and twitter personalities is - Google has an active disrespect if you’re not part of their in group . If you haven’t passed their tests, you’re basically an object of derision - a mark, an object just used for incrementing a CPM metric, or an incompetent, l…

This hasn't been my experience, and I've worked there. There might've been a couple dicks like that but definitely not the norm

I don’t know about other locations, but in Seattle the googlers and SpaceX people walk around with a lot of swagger. And you don’t have to talk to them long until workplaces get brought up and a small jab at Amazon or Microsoft is made. Which idk maybe is fair if they used to work at Amazon/Microsoft. But still I wish we weren’t so intent on maintaining a hierarchy. Maybe we just all need to develop more of a life outside of work.
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