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> Mostly just stuff any competent company would/should be doing. it's google though, so they act like it's super awesome. Yes, you're absolutely correct. But h

> Mostly just stuff any competent company would/should be doing. it's google though, so they act like it's super awesome. Yes, you're absolutely correct. But here's the thing - it was actually Google that pioneered many of this. Many of the big/competent companies that are following these practices are because of Google's "DNA" leaking into those companies (via former employees bringing along the best practices learned at Google, etc.)

theparanoid 10y ago
Microsoft used to have the best practices and...they were mostly as good as Google. Everything old is new again.
- exmsft6780 10y ago
  As someone who worked at both companies for a long time, I assure you that Google's best practices (circa when I switched) were a generation ahead of Microsoft's. Mostly due to MSFT having much longer software release cycles, a more primitive, Windows-based internal cloud, many legacy build systems, less inter-group trust, and little company-wide desire to improve things.
jeremyjh 10y ago
They may have done a better job instituting these practices across a large organization, and some of their tools have very useful and novel features, but I very much doubt there is a single practice that they actually invented. If you think there is one, please be specific. I think what Google contributed is evidence that these practices can be instituted at scale, which really was sorely lacking in some cases. This helped the industry disseminate them.
- richsinn 10y ago
  Of course it's hard to say if they completely, 100% invented anything from scratch. But they sure did "pioneer" a lot of unique practices that other software companies were not following at the time. A specific example - the practice of keeping the entire codebase at the company under a single "source" repo. Pre-Google - it would've been considered outrageous to have the entire codebase of a sophisticated software company keep their entire software contents under a single repo. But Google did it, and other companies have followed suit successfully (as Google DNA has leaked to other companies). Yes, of course keeping code in a single repo is not a "new invention". Linux is a single repo; many smaller companies have only a single repo because their only product is a single web app. Google keeps nearly 100% of their entire codebase in a single repo - and that was definitely a novel approach at the time.

theparanoid 10y ago

Microsoft used to have the best practices and...they were mostly as good as Google. Everything old is new again.

exmsft6780 10y ago
As someone who worked at both companies for a long time, I assure you that Google's best practices (circa when I switched) were a generation ahead of Microsoft's. Mostly due to MSFT having much longer software release cycles, a more primitive, Windows-based internal cloud, many legacy build systems, less inter-group trust, and little company-wide desire to improve things.

jeremyjh 10y ago

They may have done a better job instituting these practices across a large organization, and some of their tools have very useful and novel features, but I very much doubt there is a single practice that they actually invented. If you think there is one, please be specific. I think what Google contributed is evidence that these practices can be instituted at scale, which really was sorely lacking in some cases. This helped the industry disseminate them.

richsinn 10y ago
Of course it's hard to say if they completely, 100% invented anything from scratch. But they sure did "pioneer" a lot of unique practices that other software companies were not following at the time. A specific example - the practice of keeping the entire codebase at the company under a single "source" repo. Pre-Google - it would've been considered outrageous to have the entire codebase of a sophisticated software company keep their entire software contents under a single repo. But Google did it, and other companies have followed suit successfully (as Google DNA has leaked to other companies). Yes, of course keeping code in a single repo is not a "new invention". Linux is a single repo; many smaller companies have only a single repo because their only product is a single web app. Google keeps nearly 100% of their entire codebase in a single repo - and that was definitely a novel approach at the time.