4 ms·

Comparing "Google" to Windows isn't really a fair comparison. I'm sure all of the code that represents products that Microsoft has in the wild far exceeds 2B li

by k33n 11y ago

Comparing "Google" to Windows isn't really a fair comparison. I'm sure all of the code that represents products that Microsoft has in the wild far exceeds 2B lines.

guelo 11y ago
Agree especially since Google's repo contains their version of almost the entire Microsoft Office suite.
DannyBee 11y ago
Note that this is just the monolithic repository. Google also has other non-piper repositories containing hundreds of millions of lines too :P For example, android and chrome are git based. Note also that when codesearch used to crawl and index the world's code, it was not actually that large. It used to download and index tarballs, svn and cvs repositories, etc. All told, the amount of code in the world that it could find on the internet a few years ago was < 10b lines, after deduplication/etc. So while you may be right or wrong, i don't think it's as obvious you are right as you do.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  I'm still trying to figure out why having everything dumped in one big pile is something worth bragging about. I'd far rather have code sorted well into proper repositories.
  - BooneJS 11y ago
    So much is shared, though, right? Which is why Android is sorted into proper repositories but still has the 'repo' front-end wrapper to make sure you're getting the right versions of everything you need. If I wanted to change something fundamental, like I found a 10% speedup in Protobuf wire decode by changing the message slightly, there are likely very many services that all need it. Everyone at Google operates on HEAD. You're not allowed to break HEAD, and pre-submit/post-submit bots ensure you don't and will block your submit.
    - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
      From my perspective, at least, this design seems to explain why Google websites are so frequently broken in the ways different services integrate. Because Googlers edit shared resources that affect products they don't personally work on, and they just trust automated tests, which almost certainly miss a lot of the edge cases I encounter. I admit that I'm not an expert at large software development, but this seems to nearly fully explain Google's declining code quality.
      - DannyBee 11y ago
        "I have literally no idea what i am talking about, but here's something that i believe fully explains every problem i have ever encountered" :)
  - DannyBee 11y ago
    I don't have a strong opinion, but let me turn this around. Assume the code is sorted well (it is). Why does breaking them into "proper" repositories help anything? What does "proper" even mean when tons of stuff is shared? You act as if there is some obvious split that if they had "done it the right way" they would have done. That is 100% not obvious to me. How do you demarcate these lines, maintain things across these boundaries, etc.
nickpsecurity 11y ago
I also agree especially as this includes the whole Google software ecosystem and Microsoft has their own ecosystem. Microsoft's whole ecosystem of products that work together and run on Windows is much larger than Windows itself. Might not be as monolithically developed, though.
bluedino 11y ago
Windows, Office, things like .NET, other sites like MSN and Bing...
- utexaspunk 11y ago
  SQL Server has got to be a few lines...

by k33n 11y ago

Comparing "Google" to Windows isn't really a fair comparison. I'm sure all of the code that represents products that Microsoft has in the wild far exceeds 2B lines.

guelo 11y ago

Agree especially since Google's repo contains their version of almost the entire Microsoft Office suite.

DannyBee 11y ago

Note that this is just the monolithic repository. Google also has other non-piper repositories containing hundreds of millions of lines too :P For example, android and chrome are git based. Note also that when codesearch used to crawl and index the world's code, it was not actually that large. It used to download and index tarballs, svn and cvs repositories, etc. All told, the amount of code in the world that it could find on the internet a few years ago was < 10b lines, after deduplication/etc. So while you may be right or wrong, i don't think it's as obvious you are right as you do.

ocdtrekkie 11y ago
I'm still trying to figure out why having everything dumped in one big pile is something worth bragging about. I'd far rather have code sorted well into proper repositories.
- BooneJS 11y ago
  So much is shared, though, right? Which is why Android is sorted into proper repositories but still has the 'repo' front-end wrapper to make sure you're getting the right versions of everything you need. If I wanted to change something fundamental, like I found a 10% speedup in Protobuf wire decode by changing the message slightly, there are likely very many services that all need it. Everyone at Google operates on HEAD. You're not allowed to break HEAD, and pre-submit/post-submit bots ensure you don't and will block your submit.
  - ocdtrekkie 11y ago
    From my perspective, at least, this design seems to explain why Google websites are so frequently broken in the ways different services integrate. Because Googlers edit shared resources that affect products they don't personally work on, and they just trust automated tests, which almost certainly miss a lot of the edge cases I encounter. I admit that I'm not an expert at large software development, but this seems to nearly fully explain Google's declining code quality.
    - DannyBee 11y ago
      "I have literally no idea what i am talking about, but here's something that i believe fully explains every problem i have ever encountered" :)
- DannyBee 11y ago
  I don't have a strong opinion, but let me turn this around. Assume the code is sorted well (it is). Why does breaking them into "proper" repositories help anything? What does "proper" even mean when tons of stuff is shared? You act as if there is some obvious split that if they had "done it the right way" they would have done. That is 100% not obvious to me. How do you demarcate these lines, maintain things across these boundaries, etc.

nickpsecurity 11y ago

I also agree especially as this includes the whole Google software ecosystem and Microsoft has their own ecosystem. Microsoft's whole ecosystem of products that work together and run on Windows is much larger than Windows itself. Might not be as monolithically developed, though.

bluedino 11y ago

Windows, Office, things like .NET, other sites like MSN and Bing...

utexaspunk 11y ago
SQL Server has got to be a few lines...