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Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

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Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#51

Post by saraid216 »

m0th87 wrote: post #44
theorique wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a reasonable upper bound. Once the company is big enough to the point where you don't remember everyone's name, it's past the startup point.

Dunbar's number makes little sense for directly determining/classifying organizational sizes. Most of peoples' relationships lie outside of the organization they work for. You'd probably have little to no relationship with people in your organization way before you reach Dunbar's number.

The advantage of calling out Dunbar's number is that it explains why there's an upper bound of some kind.

But yes. 150 is far too high a number. I'd say it should be closer to 50.

It makes me sad to link to this, since the PARC blog no longer hosts his images, but it's more than nothing: http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2005/10/dunbar_group_co.html

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#52

Post by bsg75 »

natural219 wrote: post #35

Python has been a backbone of Dropbox since its early days as it allowed the startup to write code once but deploy it across platforms. Can anybody elaborate on this? Is the argument that Python is cross-platform because everybody uses GNU tools on every platform, or are there other reasons why Python is more cross-platform than other languages?

Perhaps as Python has had Windows installers for a longer period of time?

If me memory serves me correctly, Python has had simple Windows binary install packages (from Python.org and ActiveState) longer that most other scripting languages in the same class, that did not need require an additional layer like Cygwin.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#54

Post by jonknee »

wilfra wrote: post #31
bdesimone wrote: post #2

I'll be very interested to find out what role Guido will take up at dropbox. When someone like Matz/ Guido/ etc gets hired, what do their job responsibilities, for the community include exactly? Are language writer hires such as this purely symbolic?

Probably very similar to why Universities want Nobel Laureates on the faculty. Sure, they want their brainpower, but it's also huge for prestige and a symbol to the World of what a great University they are. This will probably help greatly with recruiting. What Python engineer wouldn't want to work with him?

> This will probably help greatly with recruiting. What Python engineer wouldn't want to work with him?

Bingo. And it will make water cooler talk about the GIL a lot more interesting.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#55

Post by kyllo »

natural219 wrote: post #35

Python has been a backbone of Dropbox since its early days as it allowed the startup to write code once but deploy it across platforms. Can anybody elaborate on this? Is the argument that Python is cross-platform because everybody uses GNU tools on every platform, or are there other reasons why Python is more cross-platform than other languages?

Yeah, I don't think that trait distinguishes Python from Ruby or Perl, or even Java, for that matter. Cross-platform compatibility is an advantage of interpreted languages in general.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#56

Post by abraham »

dorkrawk wrote: post #23
bdesimone wrote: post #2

I'll be very interested to find out what role Guido will take up at dropbox. When someone like Matz/ Guido/ etc gets hired, what do their job responsibilities, for the community include exactly? Are language writer hires such as this purely symbolic?

I would assume that someone like Guido would be really valuable when architecting complex project written in Python. Maybe he won't be directly writing a bunch of small features, but at the scale Dropbox works at some REALLY good code reviews and language-related design decisions could produce big dividends.

Code reviews and design decisions can get old though. Sometimes you just want to write a bunch of code.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#57

Post by raverbashing »

wensing wrote: post #15
untog wrote: post #4

" the adventure found at a nimble 250-person startup like Dropbox becomes more tempting " What is the definition of a startup these days, anyway?

I would argue that Dropbox isn't a startup anymore. Once you've found a business model and start scaling your personnel (i.e. Steve Blank's "Company Building" stage), a startup is no longer a startup, IMO.

Exactly that

Besides, Dropbox has already received some substantial investments, and have a healthy revenue

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#58

Post by kyllo »

pyre wrote: post #46
tonfa wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think Google could have done?

Figure out why he wanted to leave, and see if they could remedy it (e.g. more money; different challenges; etc).

Yeah but the problem is, reasons for a career change are highly personal, and by the time the employee wants to leave, it's usually already too late to keep them by sweetening the deal. The only way to know is to ask Guido himself.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#60

Post by njharman »

natural219 wrote: post #35

Python has been a backbone of Dropbox since its early days as it allowed the startup to write code once but deploy it across platforms. Can anybody elaborate on this? Is the argument that Python is cross-platform because everybody uses GNU tools on every platform, or are there other reasons why Python is more cross-platform than other languages?

No compile step. Python exists for a great many platforms.

Also true for several other "scripting" languages.

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