8 ms·

Ruby is used super widely throughout Amazon; any hatred is likely well deserved.

by WaxProlix 7y ago

chrisseaton 7y ago
Amazon uses Ruby a lot? I've never seen them talk about anything with Ruby at all. Can you give any pointers?
- WaxProlix 7y ago
  It's a lot of internal tooling, likely nothing interesting to you or worth talking too much about.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > nothing interesting to you How do you know what's interesting to me?
    - WaxProlix 7y ago
      An attempt at a polite way of saying "I'm not going to talk about it." Please take a hint instead of downvoting :)
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        Sounds more condescending and dismissive, rather than polite! And I didn't downvote you - I can't possibly have done, can I, because you can't downvote a reply to your own comment on Hacker News.
        WaxProlix 7y ago
        My apologies then.
      - darshan 7y ago
        Telling someone "this isn't interesting to you" in place of "I don't want to talk about it" is definitely not polite! I'd say it's rude in general to tell someone they won't find something interesting, and especially so when it's done as a way of disowning your own preference not to talk about it.
        kbenson 7y ago
        There's way too much being read into a statement which begins with "likely". There are plenty of things in life that are hard to explain in a way that doesn't lead to misunderstandings which are also not very consequential. For example, when people ask what I do, I could say I work at an ISP, or that I'm a systems engineer (my title), or that I'm a system administrator (some of what I do), or that I'm a software developer (the rest of what I do), or any number of other things. Depending on how interested in it I think they will be, or how interested in explaining it I am, I might respond that it's likely not that interesting. If the person asking actually wants to pursue it further, the polite thing to do would be to say "oh, I find it interesting, if you're willing to talk about it". If they responded "How do you know what's interesting to me?" I would take that as somewhat aggressive, and definitely wouldn't be interested in explaining further, depending on how I perceived their disposition. Perhaps it's a cultural miscommunication.
        Dylan16807 7y ago
        That phrasing (at least without the "to you") is fine when you are genuinely open to saying more. It's not fine as a way to refuse to say more. So you're talking about a completely different context. If they get aggressive and you then decide that you don't want to explain, that's fine. But that's not what happened here.
        kbenson 7y ago
        > But that's not what happened here. Eh, I don't think you can say that definitively. I took it as WaxProlix not wanting to/being unwilling to talk about it because it's boring, and as they found it boring, they thought other people would likely (the word they used, which I think people are ignoring) find it boring as well.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    This is Hacker News. Rest assured, we find it interesting.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  I don’t think anyone is going to give you internal information, but think testing and infrastructure
- Twirrim 7y ago
  It's used all over the place. Around the time I was leaving (2016) I was hearing of some major projects that were planning their rewrite to include a migration to Ruby. Amazon rarely likes to talk about how things are built at the nuts and bolts level.
- kevan 7y ago
  I can't quantify compared to other languages but anecdotally there's definitely parts of the company that use it heavily. There's currently 146 job postings specifically mentioning ruby on rails[1] and 3154 mentioning ruby. [1] https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/search?base_query=ruby+on+Rails&loc_query=&latitude=&longitude=&loc_group_id=&invalid_location=false&country=&city=&region=&county= https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/search?base_query=ruby+on+Rail...
- blandflakes 7y ago
  I don't know why people are being coy. This isn't some secret sauce. Ruby is a frequent scripting language at Amazon. JRuby on Rails is (or was) a solid way to get a nice web app running for internal use without interfacing with Spring. The AWS SDK is pretty great for internal tools that need to interact with S3. It honestly isn't super interesting, but it's a well-supported platform internally.
  - myroon5 7y ago
    Definitely not going to disagree with usage being frequent, but I wouldn't say Ruby is well-supported internally with respect to IDE support
    - blandflakes 7y ago
      I'm not sure what IDE support Amazon is supposed to provide WRT Ruby. Does Amazon develop and provide excellent Python or Perl IDE support? Even the Coral plugins for JVM IDEs were pretty rough.
      - myroon5 7y ago
        Mostly connecting the package cache so every module doesn't fail to import in an IDE
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  My understanding (from Steve Yegge's famous 2000s Amazon vs Google memo) is that Amazon teams can use any programming language/platform they want, as long as there is no way for other internal Amazon projects to access it except via public (internal) API. Thus lots of languages and platforms are used internally, including Ruby.
teslafanboi 7y ago
amazon engineers are very bad so would take their opinions on anything with a grain of salt

Ruby is used super widely throughout Amazon; any hatred is likely well deserved.

chrisseaton 7y ago

Amazon uses Ruby a lot? I've never seen them talk about anything with Ruby at all. Can you give any pointers?

WaxProlix 7y ago
It's a lot of internal tooling, likely nothing interesting to you or worth talking too much about.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > nothing interesting to you How do you know what's interesting to me?
  - WaxProlix 7y ago
    An attempt at a polite way of saying "I'm not going to talk about it." Please take a hint instead of downvoting :)
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      Sounds more condescending and dismissive, rather than polite! And I didn't downvote you - I can't possibly have done, can I, because you can't downvote a reply to your own comment on Hacker News.
      - WaxProlix 7y ago
        My apologies then.
    - darshan 7y ago
      Telling someone "this isn't interesting to you" in place of "I don't want to talk about it" is definitely not polite! I'd say it's rude in general to tell someone they won't find something interesting, and especially so when it's done as a way of disowning your own preference not to talk about it.
      - kbenson 7y ago
        There's way too much being read into a statement which begins with "likely". There are plenty of things in life that are hard to explain in a way that doesn't lead to misunderstandings which are also not very consequential. For example, when people ask what I do, I could say I work at an ISP, or that I'm a systems engineer (my title), or that I'm a system administrator (some of what I do), or that I'm a software developer (the rest of what I do), or any number of other things. Depending on how interested in it I think they will be, or how interested in explaining it I am, I might respond that it's likely not that interesting. If the person asking actually wants to pursue it further, the polite thing to do would be to say "oh, I find it interesting, if you're willing to talk about it". If they responded "How do you know what's interesting to me?" I would take that as somewhat aggressive, and definitely wouldn't be interested in explaining further, depending on how I perceived their disposition. Perhaps it's a cultural miscommunication.
        Dylan16807 7y ago
        That phrasing (at least without the "to you") is fine when you are genuinely open to saying more. It's not fine as a way to refuse to say more. So you're talking about a completely different context. If they get aggressive and you then decide that you don't want to explain, that's fine. But that's not what happened here.
        kbenson 7y ago
        > But that's not what happened here. Eh, I don't think you can say that definitively. I took it as WaxProlix not wanting to/being unwilling to talk about it because it's boring, and as they found it boring, they thought other people would likely (the word they used, which I think people are ignoring) find it boring as well.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  This is Hacker News. Rest assured, we find it interesting.
Aperocky 7y ago
I don’t think anyone is going to give you internal information, but think testing and infrastructure
Twirrim 7y ago
It's used all over the place. Around the time I was leaving (2016) I was hearing of some major projects that were planning their rewrite to include a migration to Ruby. Amazon rarely likes to talk about how things are built at the nuts and bolts level.
kevan 7y ago
I can't quantify compared to other languages but anecdotally there's definitely parts of the company that use it heavily. There's currently 146 job postings specifically mentioning ruby on rails[1] and 3154 mentioning ruby. [1] https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/search?base_query=ruby+on+Rails&loc_query=&latitude=&longitude=&loc_group_id=&invalid_location=false&country=&city=&region=&county= https://www.amazon.jobs/en-gb/search?base_query=ruby+on+Rail...
blandflakes 7y ago
I don't know why people are being coy. This isn't some secret sauce. Ruby is a frequent scripting language at Amazon. JRuby on Rails is (or was) a solid way to get a nice web app running for internal use without interfacing with Spring. The AWS SDK is pretty great for internal tools that need to interact with S3. It honestly isn't super interesting, but it's a well-supported platform internally.
- myroon5 7y ago
  Definitely not going to disagree with usage being frequent, but I wouldn't say Ruby is well-supported internally with respect to IDE support
  - blandflakes 7y ago
    I'm not sure what IDE support Amazon is supposed to provide WRT Ruby. Does Amazon develop and provide excellent Python or Perl IDE support? Even the Coral plugins for JVM IDEs were pretty rough.
    - myroon5 7y ago
      Mostly connecting the package cache so every module doesn't fail to import in an IDE
SkyMarshal 7y ago
My understanding (from Steve Yegge's famous 2000s Amazon vs Google memo) is that Amazon teams can use any programming language/platform they want, as long as there is no way for other internal Amazon projects to access it except via public (internal) API. Thus lots of languages and platforms are used internally, including Ruby.

teslafanboi 7y ago

amazon engineers are very bad so would take their opinions on anything with a grain of salt