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How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

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21–30 of 47 posts

Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

#21
If Dean has a superhuman power, then, it’s not the ability to do things perfectly in an instant. It’s the power to prioritize and optimize and deal in orders of magnitude. Put another way, it’s the power to recognize an opportunity to do something pretty well in far less time than it would take to do it perfectly.

The take away message is that Worse is Better!

Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

#22

Google (and by extension Jeff Dean) have made their greatest contribution in that they successfully popularized niche computer science with decent implementations. I think a point that is often lost is that Google invents very little computer science; they take obscure computer science that in most cases has already been implemented somewhere and do a very good, high visibility implementation of that computer science…

This is a wonderfully-executed middlebrow dismissal. I hope pg adds it to his detection corpus (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4714217)

Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

#23

Google (and by extension Jeff Dean) have made their greatest contribution in that they successfully popularized niche computer science with decent implementations. I think a point that is often lost is that Google invents very little computer science; they take obscure computer science that in most cases has already been implemented somewhere and do a very good, high visibility implementation of that computer science…

Exactly. They're like Madonna, or more recently Lady Gaga, they create nothing, but they take themes from the underground and bring them to a mainstream audience (and in doing so become far richer than any of the creators).

Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

#24
post #4

The original Chuck Norris jokes were sarcastic. No one thought he was much of a bad-ass, but 90% of the people who stumble across Internet memes are too stupid to understand them. That being said, Chuck Norris is a hell of a nice guy and I wish him the best, even if he isn't a bad-ass.

I actually think Chuck Norris is pretty bad-ass. Few people achieved as much as him in martial arts.

Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

#25

Google (and by extension Jeff Dean) have made their greatest contribution in that they successfully popularized niche computer science with decent implementations. I think a point that is often lost is that Google invents very little computer science; they take obscure computer science that in most cases has already been implemented somewhere and do a very good, high visibility implementation of that computer science…

The work Jeff Dean seems to be doing is _excellent software engineering_. 'Software Engineering' here I would define as 'the application of computer science'. Which is not a far fetched definition, although many dismiss it when the topic is raised.

He does that very well, applying computer science in an engineering perspective and creating very good/performant/useful products. There's a lot of credit in doing that well.

Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

#26
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they receive a little too much credit in many cases for invention when their primary contribution has been popularization. That's being a little pedantic. Applying X for Y is definitely being inventive. That's how largely every domain works. We stand on the shoulders of giants etc.

The weakness of this contribution is often cited as the reason many types of software patents should be invalid. Putting a shiny wrapper on an old idea in an obvious but slightly different context is something upon which many software hackers would normally cast a jaundiced eye. My point was largely that e.g. MapReduce had literally been used in the HPC world for quite some time in countless variations. Something sim…

I don't think you've got the right understanding of why people are against sw patents. The argument is that applying an idea to a slightly different domain already provides enough value that it doesn't need to be encouraged by patent protection. I don't hear many people saying it has little value. The number of companies supporting themselves completely on the proceeds of selling key-value store software and services trivially shows that there is a lot of economic value in non-innovative implementations of ideas.

Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

#27
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a joke - it's true... The joke part of it is in: there are two types of systems at Google, the ones that are deprecated, and the ones that are not yet ready for production.

That's not a joke either. Inside of Google you can ask anyone whether a particular API is the version that's deprecated or not ready yet, and they will always know which one it is. Try it.

Occasionally there're ones that're both; The worst case is when they're both, and also key parts of production infrastructure.

Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

#28
post #23

Google (and by extension Jeff Dean) have made their greatest contribution in that they successfully popularized niche computer science with decent implementations. I think a point that is often lost is that Google invents very little computer science; they take obscure computer science that in most cases has already been implemented somewhere and do a very good, high visibility implementation of that computer science…

Exactly. They're like Madonna, or more recently Lady Gaga, they create nothing, but they take themes from the underground and bring them to a mainstream audience (and in doing so become far richer than any of the creators).

This is one of those Poe's law moments for me. I can't tell if you're doing a parody or just believe a crazy thing.

Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

#29
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a joke either. Inside of Google you can ask anyone whether a particular API is the version that's deprecated or not ready yet, and they will always know which one it is. Try it.

Occasionally there're ones that're both; The worst case is when they're both, and also key parts of production infrastructure.

On the plus side, when the next thing fails to materialize for long enough, we do occasionally undeprecate the last thing.

Re: How Google’s Jeff Dean became the Chuck Norris of the Internet

#30
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That being said, Chuck Norris is a hell of a nice guy and I wish him the best, even if he isn't a bad-ass. You must be joking. http://www.wnd.com/author/cnorris/

What has he done that you don't like? I'm not going to read through a dozen or so articles and try to guess which one you have a problem with. Going from the titles I see a lot of stuff about cancer charities, and a few articles about religion in public schools. If its the latter, he lost that battle, just like all the other Christians. I'm just going off of his personality. He makes a lot of USO appearances, and my…

Did you not get the memo? If people hold ideas that we disagree with, we burn them.
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