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I’m always amazed how a company that creates the world’s most popular mobile OS and web browser is unable to code a decent mobile webpage. Scrolling this page

I’m always amazed how a company that creates the world’s most popular mobile OS and web browser is unable to code a decent mobile webpage. Scrolling this page is sufferable, anchor links don’t work well, etc. Basic stuff. Look no further than G Suite, Google Cloud for more examples.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thanhhaimai 7y ago
I have heard of this argument often, and I don't quite understand it. It's similar to saying "I'm always amazed at how a country that has the most number of Nobel prize winners has some citizens that can't do calculus" The people that work on Android and Chrome are not the people who work on websites. It's okay to say the website doesn't meet your expectations, but it's better to recognize that those are different projects worked on by different people with different set of requirements and resources.
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  Companies are not countries. People are hired in the first and born in the second. Companies should be concerned when their actions don't match the narrative they are trying to sell about themselves. If the Mobile Web is important to Google (and it should be), it must be a company wide effort. The “that's not my department” excuse doesn't cut it.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    "I'm always amazed at how a college that has the most number of Nobel prize winners has some professors that can't do calculus"
    - tambourine_man 7y ago
      That's a better analogy. Still, colleges are usually much more eclectic than companies. Even MIT, usually known for STEM, has one kick ass humanities department.
koyote 7y ago
To be fair, the challenges are impossible to solve on a mobile phone so I am not sure why they should invest time and effort to make it mobile friendly.
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  It's not that hard to write a decent mobile page. It's often the result of over engineering.
  - shripadk 7y ago
    But you can't use a mobile to play CTF in the first place. It would be over engineering if they made the page usable on a mobile for absolutely no reason. Some of the stages in the CTF require you to download zip files and mount DMG/NTFS files. How do you propose to do that on a mobile?
    - tambourine_man 7y ago
      No one is arguing for CTF to be playable on mobile, just that the page should be easily readable. And it’s not hard to do that.
q3k 7y ago
The entire competition is a volunteer/20% thing internally. It doesn't go through the same design cycle as official Google products. For this year, they also rewrote the scoreboard site for scratch (it's now uses Firebase). [source: I was the on-call SRE for the 2017 edition]
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  I believe you, still, it's hosted at a Google's domain and it's a company's core competency. I don't think that's excusable.
gabmiral 7y ago
I mean, it's not like this CTF requires you to unzip data, use a terminal (decrypt Base64, use Telnet and python scripts) and read weird files with unreadable characters
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  What has that got to do with anything? You should be able to read the page on mobile effortlessly. The fact that is polemic is symptomatic.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

thanhhaimai 7y ago

I have heard of this argument often, and I don't quite understand it. It's similar to saying "I'm always amazed at how a country that has the most number of Nobel prize winners has some citizens that can't do calculus" The people that work on Android and Chrome are not the people who work on websites. It's okay to say the website doesn't meet your expectations, but it's better to recognize that those are different projects worked on by different people with different set of requirements and resources.

tambourine_man 7y ago
Companies are not countries. People are hired in the first and born in the second. Companies should be concerned when their actions don't match the narrative they are trying to sell about themselves. If the Mobile Web is important to Google (and it should be), it must be a company wide effort. The “that's not my department” excuse doesn't cut it.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  "I'm always amazed at how a college that has the most number of Nobel prize winners has some professors that can't do calculus"
  - tambourine_man 7y ago
    That's a better analogy. Still, colleges are usually much more eclectic than companies. Even MIT, usually known for STEM, has one kick ass humanities department.

koyote 7y ago

To be fair, the challenges are impossible to solve on a mobile phone so I am not sure why they should invest time and effort to make it mobile friendly.

tambourine_man 7y ago
It's not that hard to write a decent mobile page. It's often the result of over engineering.
- shripadk 7y ago
  But you can't use a mobile to play CTF in the first place. It would be over engineering if they made the page usable on a mobile for absolutely no reason. Some of the stages in the CTF require you to download zip files and mount DMG/NTFS files. How do you propose to do that on a mobile?
  - tambourine_man 7y ago
    No one is arguing for CTF to be playable on mobile, just that the page should be easily readable. And it’s not hard to do that.

q3k 7y ago

The entire competition is a volunteer/20% thing internally. It doesn't go through the same design cycle as official Google products. For this year, they also rewrote the scoreboard site for scratch (it's now uses Firebase). [source: I was the on-call SRE for the 2017 edition]

tambourine_man 7y ago
I believe you, still, it's hosted at a Google's domain and it's a company's core competency. I don't think that's excusable.

gabmiral 7y ago

I mean, it's not like this CTF requires you to unzip data, use a terminal (decrypt Base64, use Telnet and python scripts) and read weird files with unreadable characters

tambourine_man 7y ago
What has that got to do with anything? You should be able to read the page on mobile effortlessly. The fact that is polemic is symptomatic.