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Question for Googlers or others: What do you think is the most well-written piece of software produced by Google? I would like to study how the world's best eng

by typon 7y ago

Question for Googlers or others: What do you think is the most well-written piece of software produced by Google? I would like to study how the world's best engineers write code. (Preferably C++, as it's the language i'm most familiar with)

thedance 7y ago
The one that people at Google who are the keepers of C++ code quality standards maintain themselves is Abseil. https://cs.opensource.google/kythe/kythe/+/master:external/com_google_absl/absl/ https://cs.opensource.google/kythe/kythe/+/master:external/c...
- alexhutcheson 7y ago
  By necessity, Abseil is full of dark template magic that would very rarely be used elsewhere in the codebase. That's the point - it encapsulates a lot of useful abstractions and allows them to be used without the client code author thinking about the guts of the abstraction. But it makes it pretty unusual relative to typical Google C++.
  - thedance 7y ago
    True for much of it, but if you look at something like cord.h, it's almost free of template programs. Google C++ application code isn't all that spiffy, to be honest. I would say most of the code is dedicated to stuff that nobody outside of Google is going to care about. I think the base libraries are more interesting.
deadmutex 7y ago
> study how the world's best engineers write code Note that you'd only be seeing the final result, not the whole process by studying source code. Also, I'd say definition of good code varies by domain.
- samatman 7y ago
  Given how version control works, source code is the area of human endeavor for which your first sentence is the least true.
mav3rick 7y ago
I think base:: our "std library" is pretty well written and portable.
chubot 7y ago
LevelDB is a widely used C++ project, written by the same people who wrote core parts of Google Search 20 years ago: https://github.com/google/leveldb https://github.com/google/leveldb

by typon 7y ago

thedance 7y ago

The one that people at Google who are the keepers of C++ code quality standards maintain themselves is Abseil. https://cs.opensource.google/kythe/kythe/+/master:external/com_google_absl/absl/ https://cs.opensource.google/kythe/kythe/+/master:external/c...

alexhutcheson 7y ago
By necessity, Abseil is full of dark template magic that would very rarely be used elsewhere in the codebase. That's the point - it encapsulates a lot of useful abstractions and allows them to be used without the client code author thinking about the guts of the abstraction. But it makes it pretty unusual relative to typical Google C++.
- thedance 7y ago
  True for much of it, but if you look at something like cord.h, it's almost free of template programs. Google C++ application code isn't all that spiffy, to be honest. I would say most of the code is dedicated to stuff that nobody outside of Google is going to care about. I think the base libraries are more interesting.

deadmutex 7y ago

> study how the world's best engineers write code Note that you'd only be seeing the final result, not the whole process by studying source code. Also, I'd say definition of good code varies by domain.

samatman 7y ago
Given how version control works, source code is the area of human endeavor for which your first sentence is the least true.

mav3rick 7y ago

I think base:: our "std library" is pretty well written and portable.

chubot 7y ago

LevelDB is a widely used C++ project, written by the same people who wrote core parts of Google Search 20 years ago: https://github.com/google/leveldb https://github.com/google/leveldb