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One counter example: the Go team, when it started (Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Robert Griesemer, Russ Cox, Ian Lance Taylor), was quite senior. But they did deliver

by krasin 5y ago

One counter example: the Go team, when it started (Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Robert Griesemer, Russ Cox, Ian Lance Taylor), was quite senior. But they did deliver.

ALittleLight 5y ago
In my experience there are some genuinely elite people in the world who do genuinely elite things. However, most of the people with elite titles or rankings aren't such people.
refenestrator 5y ago
I'm pretty sure they went ahead and wrote the thing rather than generating a million white papers about it, though. I suppose the 'thing' being prestigious to write is a differentiator, here. Put that team on AdWords with principal expectations for each of them and it's probably dysfunctional.
mleonhard 5y ago
Golang-team refused to add `math.min(x,y int32)` when I asked them with an internal Google ticket, around 2017. The company already had 63 separate instances of the function. I would add the 64th instance in my team's code. They said that's fine and closed the ticket as "Won't Fix - Working as Intended". I wrote a golang WaitableBool struct for my team's code. I tried to submit it to the company's internal 'contrib' library, but golang-team rejected it. I pointed out that the company's C++ and Java versions of the struct were used in >150,000 places. Clearly there was demand and the Golang version would become widely-used. They argued that all Golang coders should always remember details of channel syntax and be happy to read five lines of boilerplate instead of "value.waitUntilTrue()". I think their team was too senior. None of them were willing to add breadth to the standard library, despite massive code duplication within the company. They need a junior team member who can get promoted for growing and maintaining the standard library. We all need that. [0] https://pkg.go.dev/math https://pkg.go.dev/math
- mleonhard 5y ago
  An example from this year: Rather than fix problems with the golang.org website search box [0,1,2], they just removed it [3]. They ignored the low-effort workaround which is making the search box into a form that submits to Google Search. Is their whole team too senior to spend time maintaining a website search function? [0] "Make website search case-insensitive" https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40217 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40217 [1] "Make search box remember what you typed" https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40218 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40218 [2] "show search box on smaller viewports" https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40220 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40220 [3] https://github.com/golang/go/issues/44357 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/44357

by krasin 5y ago

One counter example: the Go team, when it started (Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Robert Griesemer, Russ Cox, Ian Lance Taylor), was quite senior. But they did deliver.

ALittleLight 5y ago

In my experience there are some genuinely elite people in the world who do genuinely elite things. However, most of the people with elite titles or rankings aren't such people.

refenestrator 5y ago

I'm pretty sure they went ahead and wrote the thing rather than generating a million white papers about it, though. I suppose the 'thing' being prestigious to write is a differentiator, here. Put that team on AdWords with principal expectations for each of them and it's probably dysfunctional.

mleonhard 5y ago

Golang-team refused to add `math.min(x,y int32)` when I asked them with an internal Google ticket, around 2017. The company already had 63 separate instances of the function. I would add the 64th instance in my team's code. They said that's fine and closed the ticket as "Won't Fix - Working as Intended". I wrote a golang WaitableBool struct for my team's code. I tried to submit it to the company's internal 'contrib' library, but golang-team rejected it. I pointed out that the company's C++ and Java versions of the struct were used in >150,000 places. Clearly there was demand and the Golang version would become widely-used. They argued that all Golang coders should always remember details of channel syntax and be happy to read five lines of boilerplate instead of "value.waitUntilTrue()". I think their team was too senior. None of them were willing to add breadth to the standard library, despite massive code duplication within the company. They need a junior team member who can get promoted for growing and maintaining the standard library. We all need that. [0] https://pkg.go.dev/math https://pkg.go.dev/math

mleonhard 5y ago
An example from this year: Rather than fix problems with the golang.org website search box [0,1,2], they just removed it [3]. They ignored the low-effort workaround which is making the search box into a form that submits to Google Search. Is their whole team too senior to spend time maintaining a website search function? [0] "Make website search case-insensitive" https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40217 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40217 [1] "Make search box remember what you typed" https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40218 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40218 [2] "show search box on smaller viewports" https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40220 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40220 [3] https://github.com/golang/go/issues/44357 https://github.com/golang/go/issues/44357