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Google's ‘Gopher Team’

wired.com

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Re: Google's ‘Gopher Team’

#2

Post by Robin_Message »

No they don't. One guy started a major rewrite of a broken piece of infrastructure, and "the Go team [which he is part of] now regularly volunteers to help other teams with small projects", so as to learn more about how Go can replace and augment existing systems.

This headline is so far beyond journalism as to be a joke. It's just making shit up for the sake of having a "story".

I can imagine it now. They heard "gopher", thought of another animal, then thought about how awesome some of the coders on the Go team are (look at the blinking lights!), and BAM! invented an elite squadron of coders who fix whatever problem you have based on a combination of the navy Seals and the A-team.

Re: Google's ‘Gopher Team’

#5

Post by edw519 »

If code doesn’t receive constant love it turns to shit,

I would prefer "If bad code doesn't receive constant love it turns to shit"

I am aware of thousands of examples of heavily used commercial software that hasn't been touched in 5, 10, 15, even 20 years because it just works and always has. Properly designed and written scalable software can last indefinitely with little or no modification, even through geometric changes.

But I like OP's quote. I think it should become part of every code reviewer's checklist:

  Will this turn to shit without constant love?
  No:  Pass.
  Yes: Then fix it now.

Re: Google's ‘Gopher Team’

#6

Post by kawera »

edw519 wrote: post #5

If code doesn’t receive constant love it turns to shit, I would prefer "If bad code doesn't receive constant love it turns to shit" I am aware of thousands of examples of heavily used commercial software that hasn't been touched in 5, 10, 15, even 20 years because it just works and always has. Properly designed and written scalable software can last indefinitely with little or no modification, even through geometric…

Properly designed and written scalable software can last indefinitely with little or no modification, even through geometric changes.

Daniel Bricklin wrote an interesting article[1] related to long lasting software (PDF)

[1] http://changethis.com/manifesto/download/6.200YearSoftware

Re: Google's ‘Gopher Team’

#7

Post by inaudible »

stuartcoope wrote: post #4

These slides from Brad Fitzpatrick himself on the subject were a lot more informative: http://talks.golang.org/2013/oscon-dl.slide

Thanks. This form of internet journalism really irritates me, trying desperately to create a compelling narrative out of fairly dry technical parts, only to end abruptly to some upbeat testimonial - it reads more like a poorly written press release.

Re: Google's ‘Gopher Team’

#8

Post by 16s »

Have any heavy C++ devs switched to go? What's the major advantage/compelling reason to switch? It seems to me that Go is more comparable to Python/Ruby and Java on the Web, but maybe I'm wrong.

Re: Google's ‘Gopher Team’

#9

Post by eliben »

edw519 wrote: post #5

If code doesn’t receive constant love it turns to shit, I would prefer "If bad code doesn't receive constant love it turns to shit" I am aware of thousands of examples of heavily used commercial software that hasn't been touched in 5, 10, 15, even 20 years because it just works and always has. Properly designed and written scalable software can last indefinitely with little or no modification, even through geometric…

I would argue that bad code is already shit. There's no doubt that good code can be turned to shit too if it's being modified all the time with bug fixes, etc, without paying the required technical debts.

Not sure what your example of untouched code represents. The OP says that what makes code turn bad is accumulated local changes and bug fixes without thinking about the big picture. Of course if no one ever touches the code, its quality doesn't change.

Re: Google's ‘Gopher Team’

#10

Post by eliben »

Robin_Message wrote: post #2

No they don't. One guy started a major rewrite of a broken piece of infrastructure, and "the Go team [which he is part of] now regularly volunteers to help other teams with small projects", so as to learn more about how Go can replace and augment existing systems. This headline is so far beyond journalism as to be a joke. It's just making shit up for the sake of having a "story". I can imagine it now. They heard "gop…

Yep. I wouldn't surprised to see this article come from some other outlet; I did not think it's already time to add Wired to the "yellow media" bucket (though last week's article about LLVM being the last thread holding Google and Apple together just about did it)
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