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It must have been embarrassing to have had to write that. Anyway I would be embarrassed. "Our existing code is a whole mountain range of mud. We hope new code w

It must have been embarrassing to have had to write that. Anyway I would be embarrassed. "Our existing code is a whole mountain range of mud. We hope new code written in this new language will be less so." Anyway it will be much slower to write bad code in it, with the compiler kvetching the whole time, so the rate of accumulation of bad code will necessarily be lower.

saagarjha 4y ago
It should not be embarrassing to identify shortcomings of your past, especially those that arose from decisions that were reasonable at the time.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  The same people who wrote the bad old code will be writing the new code. They may hope that it will be better code, but a big ball of mud is a big ball of mud, whatever the language. I don't agree that the decisions at the time were reasonable. Coding in Google-dialect C++ was a spectacularly bad choice, evident even then. Each day they stick to it is another equally bad choice, well into thousands now.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Chrome is written by hundreds of people. It's an absolutely massive codebase.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      Yes. Hundreds of people are writing it even now, adding to that massive codebase. The people writing code in Rust will mostly be drawn from among those same people. They might not be the ones who have been coding the bugs. If not, the new code will, perforce, not be less buggy. If they are the ones who have been coding the bugs, we should expect new bugs.
  - DannyBee 4y ago
    The first sentence is literally not true, and easy to see just from looking at changes in who contributes over time. The number of contributors is not even the same order of magnitude from when it started. Chrome was released 14 years ago, and they started writing it even earlier than that, so even trivial "passage of time" would tell you it was unlikely to be true - most developers are not working on the same codebase or even at the same company, they did 14 years ago. This was much more common in tech decades ago , but not anymore, and not been true for a long time. So even if it was "bad old code" (which, i'll explain, is also nonsense), the same people aren't writing it. As for "bad old code" - Chrome was faster, safer, less janky, etc, than its contemporaries for many many years since inception. So when you say "Coding in Google-dialect C++ was a spectacularly bad choice, evident even then", it just makes you look silly - it clearly was not. If it was such a bad choice, evident even then, the former would not have happened. Overall - to look at clear success and basically say "they totally fucked everything up, and i wouldn't have done it, because i know better", is pretty arrogant. To then think that if there are bad design decisions, the main bad ones from decades ago are the programming language, is honestly the most hilariously arrogant thing i've read on HN in a while. So congrats?
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      The article is an extended admission of series of bad decisions leading to problems so bad they feel they need to switch programming language to try to patch up after. If there were not fundamental problems they have failed to address adequately for years, none of this would even be under discussion. It is face-saving to blame the programming language, but we should not be fooled. Canonically, the good craftsman does not blame the tool.
      - insanitybit 4y ago
        Pretty much nonsense, really. Given the herculean effort Google has put into Chromium to deal with these sorts of problems and the massive investment they've made in C++ it should not be taken lightly at all that they're choosing any other language for a project that has been using it for decades. > Canonically, the good craftsman does not blame the tool. Yeah that's so true, that's why we build our sky scrapers by bashing rocks into wood and walling it up with dried feces and dirt, right?
  - saagarjha 4y ago
    I am not a fan of the Google dialect of C++. That said, there is no dialect of C++ that would solve the issues they are running into and will continue running into if they use C++. Every major user of C++ regardless of organization or style guidelines has the exact same concerns with the language.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      I never get memory usage errors in my C++ code. Many others, likewise. It is probably true that Google staff, with their existing education and background, cannot achieve this, but other organizations do. There is of course no possibility of Google recoding all of Chromium in modern C++ or Rust, so they will live with the bugs they have already coded. A new browser, such as Ladybird, could avoid Google's failings.
rpigab 4y ago
I fail to see how it would be embarrassing to improve their product. Is it embarrassing for automakers to release a new car with new technology that's better than their last car?
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  It is embarrassing to have released cars year after year with fundamental problems that have not been fixed, year after year. Or, it should be. American carmakers really should be embarrassed. We do not know if next year's car will actually be notably, or even any, better than this year's. The article says they hope so, but obviously nobody knows. Probably there will be fewer of a class of bugs in the new code, but there might also be radically less code implementing needed features. We can only wait and see.
  - pittmajp 4y ago
    What do you mean by “fundamental problems.” I’m using chrome right now, it works great, and there’s no better browser. I assure you they’re not embarrassed they didn’t write it in rust from the beginning and they’re not embarrassed to have written the best and most successful browser there is.
    - moloch-hai 4y ago
      They are so very "not embarrassed" that they are embarking on a massive change in how they operate. Or, claim to be; we will need to wait and see if it really happens, and then, if it does happen, if it has any desirable outcome. We can anyway be certain Google does not need unpaid help defending them.
sebzim4500 4y ago
If you think Google should be embarassed to have written chrome, do you also believe that every other browser vendor should be even more embarassed to have written something less stable/performant/etc. than chrome? I use firefox for ideological reasons, but there is no denying that it is the (slightly) worse choice from a pure tech perspective.
- moloch-hai 4y ago
  We may compare to the situation of American automobile manufacturers. If we had no Toyota or Honda to compare to, one might then insist cars could not be reliable. One might even point to Jeep and Tesla and claim Ford and Chevy were exemplary, by comparison. But we happen to know cars can be better because we have better cars.

saagarjha 4y ago

It should not be embarrassing to identify shortcomings of your past, especially those that arose from decisions that were reasonable at the time.

moloch-hai 4y ago
The same people who wrote the bad old code will be writing the new code. They may hope that it will be better code, but a big ball of mud is a big ball of mud, whatever the language. I don't agree that the decisions at the time were reasonable. Coding in Google-dialect C++ was a spectacularly bad choice, evident even then. Each day they stick to it is another equally bad choice, well into thousands now.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Chrome is written by hundreds of people. It's an absolutely massive codebase.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    Yes. Hundreds of people are writing it even now, adding to that massive codebase. The people writing code in Rust will mostly be drawn from among those same people. They might not be the ones who have been coding the bugs. If not, the new code will, perforce, not be less buggy. If they are the ones who have been coding the bugs, we should expect new bugs.
- DannyBee 4y ago
  The first sentence is literally not true, and easy to see just from looking at changes in who contributes over time. The number of contributors is not even the same order of magnitude from when it started. Chrome was released 14 years ago, and they started writing it even earlier than that, so even trivial "passage of time" would tell you it was unlikely to be true - most developers are not working on the same codebase or even at the same company, they did 14 years ago. This was much more common in tech decades ago , but not anymore, and not been true for a long time. So even if it was "bad old code" (which, i'll explain, is also nonsense), the same people aren't writing it. As for "bad old code" - Chrome was faster, safer, less janky, etc, than its contemporaries for many many years since inception. So when you say "Coding in Google-dialect C++ was a spectacularly bad choice, evident even then", it just makes you look silly - it clearly was not. If it was such a bad choice, evident even then, the former would not have happened. Overall - to look at clear success and basically say "they totally fucked everything up, and i wouldn't have done it, because i know better", is pretty arrogant. To then think that if there are bad design decisions, the main bad ones from decades ago are the programming language, is honestly the most hilariously arrogant thing i've read on HN in a while. So congrats?
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    The article is an extended admission of series of bad decisions leading to problems so bad they feel they need to switch programming language to try to patch up after. If there were not fundamental problems they have failed to address adequately for years, none of this would even be under discussion. It is face-saving to blame the programming language, but we should not be fooled. Canonically, the good craftsman does not blame the tool.
    - insanitybit 4y ago
      Pretty much nonsense, really. Given the herculean effort Google has put into Chromium to deal with these sorts of problems and the massive investment they've made in C++ it should not be taken lightly at all that they're choosing any other language for a project that has been using it for decades. > Canonically, the good craftsman does not blame the tool. Yeah that's so true, that's why we build our sky scrapers by bashing rocks into wood and walling it up with dried feces and dirt, right?
- saagarjha 4y ago
  I am not a fan of the Google dialect of C++. That said, there is no dialect of C++ that would solve the issues they are running into and will continue running into if they use C++. Every major user of C++ regardless of organization or style guidelines has the exact same concerns with the language.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    I never get memory usage errors in my C++ code. Many others, likewise. It is probably true that Google staff, with their existing education and background, cannot achieve this, but other organizations do. There is of course no possibility of Google recoding all of Chromium in modern C++ or Rust, so they will live with the bugs they have already coded. A new browser, such as Ladybird, could avoid Google's failings.

rpigab 4y ago

I fail to see how it would be embarrassing to improve their product. Is it embarrassing for automakers to release a new car with new technology that's better than their last car?

moloch-hai 4y ago
It is embarrassing to have released cars year after year with fundamental problems that have not been fixed, year after year. Or, it should be. American carmakers really should be embarrassed. We do not know if next year's car will actually be notably, or even any, better than this year's. The article says they hope so, but obviously nobody knows. Probably there will be fewer of a class of bugs in the new code, but there might also be radically less code implementing needed features. We can only wait and see.
- pittmajp 4y ago
  What do you mean by “fundamental problems.” I’m using chrome right now, it works great, and there’s no better browser. I assure you they’re not embarrassed they didn’t write it in rust from the beginning and they’re not embarrassed to have written the best and most successful browser there is.
  - moloch-hai 4y ago
    They are so very "not embarrassed" that they are embarking on a massive change in how they operate. Or, claim to be; we will need to wait and see if it really happens, and then, if it does happen, if it has any desirable outcome. We can anyway be certain Google does not need unpaid help defending them.

sebzim4500 4y ago

If you think Google should be embarassed to have written chrome, do you also believe that every other browser vendor should be even more embarassed to have written something less stable/performant/etc. than chrome? I use firefox for ideological reasons, but there is no denying that it is the (slightly) worse choice from a pure tech perspective.

moloch-hai 4y ago
We may compare to the situation of American automobile manufacturers. If we had no Toyota or Honda to compare to, one might then insist cars could not be reliable. One might even point to Jeep and Tesla and claim Ford and Chevy were exemplary, by comparison. But we happen to know cars can be better because we have better cars.