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Having worked with Guido on App Engine, I believe I can answer this. Just because someone wrote a language doesn't mean they have no other talents as engineers
by j_baker 14y ago
Having worked with Guido on App Engine, I believe I can answer this.
Just because someone wrote a language doesn't mean they have no other talents as engineers. I will say that apart from being a good language writer, he is also a good Engineer. For us having so much invested in Python, Guido has been an important part of App Engine. But even if that wasn't true (as it may be for Dropbox), having well-known programmers is an important way of marketing to other engineers, be they customers or potential hires.
TL;DR - App Engine got great use out of Guido while he worked with us, and I'm sure Dropbox will too.
- nostrademons 14y agoGuido wrote the NDB framework for AppEngine, which, as an AppEngine user, I'd say has one of the most clever ways to do async requests that I've seen in any major language. I'm used to the C++ frameworks for async that are used in the main search stack, and switching to AppEngine and having things pretty much "just work" has been great. He also did Mondrian, which kicked off the trend toward web-based code-review and was a huge step forward from just critiquing patches over e-mail. Usually famous programmers get famous because they've done a lot of programming; that experience translates into some pretty cool programming chops.
- intropic 14y agoI'm not sure how I can see Guido having the effect at Dropbox that he had at Google. Dropbox's engineering difficulties, while large, are not near that of Google's. Is this more of a Matz being hired by Heroku scenario, in name only sort of thing.