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Dropbox was an excellent service back in the day. Then they re-wrote their desktop apps (I think in python?) and it never synced cleanly after that. I'm all-i
by hylaride 5mo ago
Dropbox was an excellent service back in the day. Then they re-wrote their desktop apps (I think in python?) and it never synced cleanly after that.
I'm all-in on the apple ecosystem, so while it's not perfect, iCloud storage works better. Was a shame, though.
- jeffbee 5mo agoThe biggest lesson I learned working at Dropbox was how toxic python is. If you have an unmanageable python code base, and hire Guido himself to help you fix it, he'll dig you into an even deeper hole and then quit. Which honestly was an extension of my experience at Google. When I left Google for Dropbox, python at Google was also in crisis. These two companies cemented my "python: not even once" stance.
- varun_ch 5mo agoTIL the creator of Python worked at Dropbox for 6 years.
- DoctorDabadedoo 5mo agoI would say that in general dynamic type languages are problematic in a large codebase without strict safeguards (Any everywhere, untested paths, lack of test coverage, large methods with different return scopes, etc.). I've worked a long time in C++ land in large codebases and the issues there are different, but to undig a project from the spaguetti land is like pulling teeth.
- matsemann 5mo agoIt was python from the start ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8892 ), but maybe the 2to3 migration, or just a general rewrite you're thinking of?
- hylaride 5mo agoThere was a "major" change in the agent roughly a decade ago. Dropbox went from being a simple folder sync tool to a much more bloated agent that never synced cleanly. I don't know if they just moved away from some modules that were written in C or something, but I gave up on it soon after.