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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

#292

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sounds kind of like this famous linus rant: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75

Is he always like that? That's toxic af

He has toned it down significantly in the last few years.

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

#293
post #234

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…

From what I can remember Datastore-> Firestore (and firestore is a PITA because you can only have one per project even though when interacting with apis you pass in a database name. Go figure) Remote build execution - deprecated. Our live systems went down because of it and they didn’t even send an email they were killing it. Some person just pressed the kill switch and even support was unaware. Their gcloud stuff as…

fyi, I use cloud datastore, and there was a breaking change about 2 years ago going from beta to "release", but that's it. You don't need to upgrade your current datastore to firestore, at least I haven't got any "it will break" emails about it.

However, I do generally agree about the rant. While datastore still works, I can't upgrade my node-js app because the newer node bindings for GCP break the api's, and I can't upgrade my app's Node version either because They decided to ship static WebRTC binaries for the node GCP packages and those arn't avaiable for node 12.x (for the old package version I'm using)

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

#294
post #221

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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.

They still don't have async-await. Once that arrives, a lot of code gets redesigned again.

Async/await currently looks like it'll be a non-breaking change. Obviously you'll have to redesign a whole bunch of code to actually take advantage of it, but you won't have to adopt it just to upgrade to the newest version of Swift. If you decide it's not worth the effort, you'll have the option to just not redesign anything.

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

#295

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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

You're $100k off - I make $150k a year. I'd be more satisfied with a quarter million a year to be clear.

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

#296
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 ~mandated moving apps to Swift. I don't see why they couldn't do it again? Purely because of the existence of Flutter?

Apple has not mandated moving apps to Swift. Obj-c is still fully supported and even continuing to be improved. They have not announced any plans to deprecate obj-c either.

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

#297
post #203

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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 ins…

yes but,

an upgrade with some incompatible changes is still a world of difference compared to potentially being forced to rewrite a whole bunch of code because the system you used is completely discontinued and the alternative that replaces it isn't even remotely similar

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

#298

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I'm reminded of a blog post I once read, which annoyingly I now cannot find, on how the job of a library maintainer is to not break the API. If you break the API, you've failed at your job. This mindset makes more sense than treating API breakages as a routine case-by-case decision. As the article puts it, breaking changes are breaking the library's commitments. (The library/service distinction doesn't matter much he…

sounds kind of like this famous linus rant: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75

Linus is 100% correct here.

Too often it’s “a user error”.. no, it’s a platform/developer/provider ak lower level error or mark of laziness

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

#299
post #164
post #97

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You pop up in every post about Google or Facebook and make the conversation about yourself, wallowing in self pity because you didn't land a job there straight out of college. This might sound harsh, but you need to get over it and move on.

^^ what this guy said. You named yourself lowiqengineer because your SAT score was “only” 2200. That’s in the 98th percentile —- if it were an IQ test, it would get you into Mensa, the organization for high IQ people! You talk as if people from FANG (your invented acronym to exclude Amazon) look down on all others, but it seems that you are the one looking down on all others, everyone who wasn’t lucky enough to get i…

> These companies you aspire to do behavioral interviews, and I’m guessing you’re failing them.

Don't know why people say this. I'm usually pretty good at behavioral interviews. The problem is the algorithmic interviews (again, this is where my IQ fixation comes from).

IDK man, compared to most everyone else I seem to have failed life at this point given that I have zero accomplishments and little financial security.

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

#300

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The promotion system isn't the issue, the promotion system was the issue 10 years ago. For the last 10 years Google has been hiring and promoting and keeping people who prioritize shiny new things more than maintaining old things. If you start rewarding maintaining old things you aren't going to suddenly get what you want, you're just going to lose a tonne of people because they don't want to do what you're telling t…

> you're just going to lose a tonne of people because they don't want to do what you're telling them and you won't be able to hire good people with your priorities because no one is going to believe they can have a good career at Google by prioritizing stability and long term support I don't follow. Wouldn't ridding Google of its reputation for inadequate maintenance, make it a more prestigious employer? Its reputati…

Not among potential employees I would guess.

Obviously generalizing here, but most engineers (especially fresh graduates) would rather work on a new thing than do maintenance, if given the choice. Google offers a pretty good value proposition: Lots of money and you get to work at new exiting projects and if you don‘t like it you can change to something you like. There‘s obviously more nuance to this, but that seems like a pretty good deal for many people.

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