7 ms·

Should have gone with unsigned ints, YouTube! EDIT: Which is the solution they apparently implemented, converting signed to unsigned at some higher layer.

blahedo 12y ago
Surely only temporarily, though. I mean, this is an exponential process---adding one bit only doubles the space, and it will not take another nine years before some video passes 4 billion.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  By that line of reasoning, 15.75 years from now there will be a viewcount greater than 8 billion. ... and now I realize you may be correct, and that it's probably inevitable that a viewcount will not only exceed the total number of people alive, but will double or even quadruple it. Our total population is actually about 100 billion, but only ~7% of us are still alive. The shadows of the dead will be forever enshrined as YouTube view counts. Our shadows.
  - mudge 12y ago
    Wow, shit
  - trothamel 12y ago
    YouTube is slightly under 10 years old. It's interesting how we're willing to project it forward into the far future. Not that i think that's wrong or anything - it's just that it's gone from nothing to essential in a fraction of a human lifetime. "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." - Bill Gates
    - rattray 12y ago
      That's a great quote, thanks for sharing
  - Retra 12y ago
    With playlists and whatnot, you can easily watch a video numerous times, so the max could very easily exceed any population size.
- xanderjanz 12y ago
  Yea according to a reddit post from a Googler this was more of a staged easter egg then a real bug. Google coding styles actually prohibit the use of unsigned integers in C++ code.
  - fishnchips 12y ago
    Interesting, until very recently I was writing a whole bunch of C++ at Google but I can't recall any such restriction. Most internal data structures at Google are expressed as protocol buffers and surely these support unsigned integers. In fact if someone suggested that a view counter should be signed that would invite a snark (kind of Google's specialty) like 'can it ever be negative'? [One problem with unsigned integers in protocol buffers is that some supported languages like Python have no concept of signed/unsigned integers. Which is why for example Thrift does not support that distinction. This has nothing to do with C++ though.]
    - haberman 12y ago
      > One problem with unsigned integers in protocol buffers is that some supported languages like Python have no concept of signed/unsigned integers. You can still implement range checks to enforce that the numbers are in the correct domain. It's not that much of a problem. This is more of a problem in a statically typed language like Java, because it means there is no native data type to map protobuf's unsigned types to. In Python this doesn't matter as much because numbers will automatically promote themselves to bigints.
  - gohrt 12y ago
    Why not both? Fix the bug, then celebrate.
- lazaroclapp 12y ago
  Why not just use some sort of unlimited BigNum implementation? Yeah, for small numbers it's still ~2x the size of just storing an int, depending on implementation (or it can be: "int unless MAX_VALUE, in which case bignum is stored somewhere else") and it might be slower to operate on... but, on the other hand, you are already storing and processing a full video for every such counter! Edit: Now I realize that would mean Google couldn't have made this joke. But I am still not sure this was foreseen by Youtube devs from day one.
- sytelus 12y ago
  I suggest someone write a browser add-in that re-plays this 100s of time when machines are idle to do massive distributed viewcount attack and force YouTube upgrade to 64-bit unsigned int now!
timothya 12y ago
From the Google C++ Style Guide: "You should not use the unsigned integer types such as uint32_t, unless there is a valid reason such as representing a bit pattern rather than a number, or you need defined overflow modulo 2^N. In particular, do not use unsigned types to say a number will never be negative. Instead, use assertions for this." [0] [0]: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.html#Integer_Types http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.h...
- coolgeek 12y ago
  From the coolgeek style guide: "Never use a signed type for a number that can never be negative" One of my pet peeves is developers using int (instead of unsigned ints) for primary keys in database tables.
  - tiglionabbit 12y ago
    Unsigned ints aren't supported by any sql database.
    - MrOrelliOReilly 12y ago
      Sarcasm? http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/numeric-type-overview.html http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/numeric-type-overview...
      - esaym 12y ago
        His sarcasm is saying that mysql isn't a real database since it has data types that break the sql standard I guess. "SQL only specifies the integer types integer (or int), smallint, and bigint." http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/datatype-numeric.html#DATATYPE-INT http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/datatype-numeric.h...
      - tiglionabbit 12y ago
        Oh, I wasn't aware that there was a database that supported them. I mostly use postgres and sqlite, which both do not support them.
31reasons 12y ago
Hire people who know the difference Google. Math puzzles doesn't solve everything :)
tdsamardzhiev 12y ago
Counting on the difference between signed and unsigned is asking for trouble. 64-bit ints would be a better option.

blahedo 12y ago

Surely only temporarily, though. I mean, this is an exponential process---adding one bit only doubles the space, and it will not take another nine years before some video passes 4 billion.

sillysaurus3 12y ago
By that line of reasoning, 15.75 years from now there will be a viewcount greater than 8 billion. ... and now I realize you may be correct, and that it's probably inevitable that a viewcount will not only exceed the total number of people alive, but will double or even quadruple it. Our total population is actually about 100 billion, but only ~7% of us are still alive. The shadows of the dead will be forever enshrined as YouTube view counts. Our shadows.
- mudge 12y ago
  Wow, shit
- trothamel 12y ago
  YouTube is slightly under 10 years old. It's interesting how we're willing to project it forward into the far future. Not that i think that's wrong or anything - it's just that it's gone from nothing to essential in a fraction of a human lifetime. "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten." - Bill Gates
  - rattray 12y ago
    That's a great quote, thanks for sharing
- Retra 12y ago
  With playlists and whatnot, you can easily watch a video numerous times, so the max could very easily exceed any population size.
xanderjanz 12y ago
Yea according to a reddit post from a Googler this was more of a staged easter egg then a real bug. Google coding styles actually prohibit the use of unsigned integers in C++ code.
- fishnchips 12y ago
  Interesting, until very recently I was writing a whole bunch of C++ at Google but I can't recall any such restriction. Most internal data structures at Google are expressed as protocol buffers and surely these support unsigned integers. In fact if someone suggested that a view counter should be signed that would invite a snark (kind of Google's specialty) like 'can it ever be negative'? [One problem with unsigned integers in protocol buffers is that some supported languages like Python have no concept of signed/unsigned integers. Which is why for example Thrift does not support that distinction. This has nothing to do with C++ though.]
  - haberman 12y ago
    > One problem with unsigned integers in protocol buffers is that some supported languages like Python have no concept of signed/unsigned integers. You can still implement range checks to enforce that the numbers are in the correct domain. It's not that much of a problem. This is more of a problem in a statically typed language like Java, because it means there is no native data type to map protobuf's unsigned types to. In Python this doesn't matter as much because numbers will automatically promote themselves to bigints.
- gohrt 12y ago
  Why not both? Fix the bug, then celebrate.
lazaroclapp 12y ago
Why not just use some sort of unlimited BigNum implementation? Yeah, for small numbers it's still ~2x the size of just storing an int, depending on implementation (or it can be: "int unless MAX_VALUE, in which case bignum is stored somewhere else") and it might be slower to operate on... but, on the other hand, you are already storing and processing a full video for every such counter! Edit: Now I realize that would mean Google couldn't have made this joke. But I am still not sure this was foreseen by Youtube devs from day one.
sytelus 12y ago
I suggest someone write a browser add-in that re-plays this 100s of time when machines are idle to do massive distributed viewcount attack and force YouTube upgrade to 64-bit unsigned int now!

timothya 12y ago

From the Google C++ Style Guide: "You should not use the unsigned integer types such as uint32_t, unless there is a valid reason such as representing a bit pattern rather than a number, or you need defined overflow modulo 2^N. In particular, do not use unsigned types to say a number will never be negative. Instead, use assertions for this." [0] [0]: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.html#Integer_Types http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.h...

coolgeek 12y ago
From the coolgeek style guide: "Never use a signed type for a number that can never be negative" One of my pet peeves is developers using int (instead of unsigned ints) for primary keys in database tables.
- tiglionabbit 12y ago
  Unsigned ints aren't supported by any sql database.
  - MrOrelliOReilly 12y ago
    Sarcasm? http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/numeric-type-overview.html http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/numeric-type-overview...
    - esaym 12y ago
      His sarcasm is saying that mysql isn't a real database since it has data types that break the sql standard I guess. "SQL only specifies the integer types integer (or int), smallint, and bigint." http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/datatype-numeric.html#DATATYPE-INT http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/datatype-numeric.h...
    - tiglionabbit 12y ago
      Oh, I wasn't aware that there was a database that supported them. I mostly use postgres and sqlite, which both do not support them.

31reasons 12y ago

Hire people who know the difference Google. Math puzzles doesn't solve everything :)

tdsamardzhiev 12y ago

Counting on the difference between signed and unsigned is asking for trouble. 64-bit ints would be a better option.