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Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

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Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#171

Post by jaimebuelta »

btilly wrote: post #65
lquist wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I heard that this tool was not well received at Google; anybody else hear this?

When I was there, everyone I knew used it and sang its praises. But it is a large company with a lot of teams. I am sure there were people somewhere who thought it was awful.

I use Rietveld (not in Google) and I'm not particularly impress. It makes the job, but I don't think is a GREAT tool. After all, there are not many ways you can do a code review...

I'd love something that will be more integrated with source control (git in particular), maybe I'm asking too much...

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#172

Post by pretoriusB »

Sam_Odio wrote: post #162
herval wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaning Apple is a startup?

No. A growing company is not necessarily a company designed for growth. Startups are rarely profitable since a company designed for growth reinvests its revenue back into the company to create future growth (think a "ramen profitable" startup vs a "lifestyle business"). Large profits mean the company has run out of investment opportunities.

So a startup is mostly a pyramid scam on investor/IPO money, not interested in a specific end product (since they pivot) or building a profitable company (judging by what you say).

I'd rather have a lifestyle business, which at least until the nineties we used to call just company/business.

You know, like Apple, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Adobe et all, despite not being startups are _just_ businesses.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#173

Post by pretoriusB »

nostrademons wrote: post #152
ChuckMcM wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect a "startup" is any company that is serving a market that has yet to prove it is viable. Many folks use that term to describe any privately held company that is growing into something much larger.

Or a market that is known to be viable with a product that is not yet known to be viable. I think most people would consider Tesla a startup, but cars have been around for a century.

Yes, but in their case it's "electric cars" which is a different market.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#174

Post by dalke »

enneff wrote: post #156
RenegadeHero wrote: post #62

It always strikes me as odd when something like this happens. Guido is still working nine-to-fives and Drew never has to work again. Can someone tell me why a brilliant person like Guido isn't worth a billion dollars? Have tons of fancy cars and a fancy house? Has to work for another company?

Since when do language designers get rich? I can't think of a single person who got rich through language design.

According to Borland's 1997 lawsuit against Microsoft, Anders Hejlsberg had a signing bonus of $1 million plus stock options to move to Microsoft. That sounds like a rich language designer.

I think of language design like running. Almost everyone can run, a lot of people run because they enjoy it, some of those enter competitions, but mostly because they enjoy the social and competitive aspects. Very few people make a living by running, and almost no one gets rich as a professional runner.

A lot of people enjoy making new languages. Some of these languages are used by more than a handful of people, though most of those are domain-specific languages. Only a few languages enter wide-spread use, and of those language designers, very few get rich from that work.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#175

Post by Luyt »

njharman wrote: post #60
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.

But python code is compiled (and saved as *.pyc files). The compiled code is then executed by a VM, in the same way as Ruby, Java and C# and a lot of other languages work.

Therefore, it is a bit stange to see people referring to Ruby or Python as 'scripting' languages. I'd call shell script a 'scripting' language, but not Java or Python.

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#177

Post by mcherm »

SimHacker wrote: post #136
DigitalSea wrote: post #120

Speechless. This is definitely one of the best decisions that Dropbox will probably ever make. Not only will this mean that Dropbox can hire other equally great Python developers, but as a company you can't get any more humbling than, "hey we hired the guy who wrote the programming language this site is based on and makes its money from" Guido is an exceptional engineer as well, not just a guy who knows Python really…

All that, plus the fact that they hired him AWAY from Google. Matz is one of the "rare gems" in the Ruby community. So doesn't that make Guido one of the "rare eggs" in the Python community? ;)

Groan

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#178

Post by lispython »

ralph wrote: post #176
lispython wrote: post #145

I heard from a friend who talked with Guido this year, he couldn't let Google add Python to Android and Chrome, this make him disappointed.

"couldn't let" is odd. Do you mean "get", IOW persuade Google to add Python.

Thanks, I mean "get".

Re: Dropbox Hires Guido Van Rossum

#180

Post by winter_blue »

protomyth wrote: post #11
debacle wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that a start-up can't have more than a certain number of employees?

At 250 people, you would think you're a business and no longer a startup. Once you pass Dunbar's number you probably are no longer a startup.

I honestly don't know why you'd need 250 people to run a service like Dropbox. Dropbox is a piece of software that could recreated in about a month by a smart hacker; and if you're using AWS, you don't have worry about the servers (so don't need a sysadmin/maintenance staff) -- so, theoretically could be comfortably run by a handful of skilled core engineers.

Why are 250 people working at Dropbox? Is Dropbox overstaffed?

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