Live data from Hacker News

Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

addyosmani.com

121–130 of 151 posts

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few people are capable of doing engineering from a cabin in the woods even if they can mirror the entire code base on their machine since engineering is a collaborative effort.

I would hope that you are able to work on self-contained projects without having to interact with other people for at least a day or two at a time…

Who is driving out to a cabin in the woods to work for just one day?

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#122
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have only worked at a few companies, and I won't comment about the quality of engineering done at Google, but Google's Engineering Systems are the best I have ever used. From Code Search to Critique to Cider (Online IDE) to Blaze (Build) to having the entire code base "mounted" on my dev machine and the integration with golinks, it was an absolute pleasure to work with.

> having the entire code base "mounted" on my dev machine My impression is that this is a result of a policy that google3 never touches a developer machine, which of course means you can't disconnect and work from a log cabin in the woods. Really sounds like bending yourself around an antipattern to be honest.

It's not your code, it's Google's and I don't see how this is an anti-pattern. It is actually one of the best thought out solutions to balancing source code supply chain security and productivity. The fact that the industry has moved towards git and allows employees to clone proprietary codebases onto developer machines anywhere in the world is pure insanity.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I guess before Google you did have to wait 5 whole seconds to get the same information, because of all the ads AltaVista spewed at you along with their search results. Progress. As for YouTube, it was bought, not created by Google, wasn't it?

As to AltaVista, I'm not old enough to have used it. But my guess is that its accuracy and speed was not higher than that of the best competitors to Google right now. And to me, no competitor comes close in matching Google's combination of accuracy and speed across many categories of search (I've tried bing/you.com/yahoo.com/duckduckgo so far). As for youtube, serving video is not the impressive part. It's the scale…

I'm old enough to remember AltaVista and all of the others. There's a reason I stopped using them almost immediately when I found Google.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#124
post #82
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because their simply a bad at this you wrote this. about someone else's writing

Recognizing something is difficult doesn’t mean you are good at it.

wow what a great way to say you aren't qualified to talk about this

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As to AltaVista, I'm not old enough to have used it. But my guess is that its accuracy and speed was not higher than that of the best competitors to Google right now. And to me, no competitor comes close in matching Google's combination of accuracy and speed across many categories of search (I've tried bing/you.com/yahoo.com/duckduckgo so far). As for youtube, serving video is not the impressive part. It's the scale…

I'm old enough to remember AltaVista and all of the others. There's a reason I stopped using them almost immediately when I found Google.

Me too, but it was just a better search engine at the time, which isn't nothing, but not exactly "pushing the envelopes of what humanity is capable of" either.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#127
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recognizing something is difficult doesn’t mean you are good at it.

wow what a great way to say you aren't qualified to talk about this

You don’t need to be an expert to judge when someone falls flat on their face.

So no, I don’t have great advice for the author, but failure on that magnitude is obvious.

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm old enough to remember AltaVista and all of the others. There's a reason I stopped using them almost immediately when I found Google.

Me too, but it was just a better search engine at the time, which isn't nothing, but not exactly "pushing the envelopes of what humanity is capable of" either.

Fair point!

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hope that you are able to work on self-contained projects without having to interact with other people for at least a day or two at a time…

Who is driving out to a cabin in the woods to work for just one day?

Never taken a three day trip but want to get work done on Monday?

Re: Software Engineering Insights from 10 Years at Google

#130
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having the entire code base "mounted" on my dev machine My impression is that this is a result of a policy that google3 never touches a developer machine, which of course means you can't disconnect and work from a log cabin in the woods. Really sounds like bending yourself around an antipattern to be honest.

It's not your code, it's Google's and I don't see how this is an anti-pattern. It is actually one of the best thought out solutions to balancing source code supply chain security and productivity. The fact that the industry has moved towards git and allows employees to clone proprietary codebases onto developer machines anywhere in the world is pure insanity.

It’s also Google’s laptop but maybe they should have me remote into it instead of letting me touch it. Who knows, I might steal it…
Post reply on HN