29/05/2008
Google: sorry, but Lisp/Ruby/Erlang not on the menu
Yes, language propaganda again. Ain’t it fun ?
Here comes a nice quote from the latest Steve Yegge post (read it entirely if you have the time, it’s both fun and educational - at least for me). So, there:
I made the famously, horribly, career-shatteringly bad mistake of trying to use Ruby at Google, for this project. And I became, very quickly, I mean almost overnight, the Most Hated Person At Google. And, uh, and I’d have arguments with people about it, and they’d be like Nooooooo, WHAT IF… And ultimately, you know, ultimately they actually convinced me that they were right, in the sense that there actually were a few things. There were some taxes that I was imposing on the systems people, where they were gonna have to have some maintenance issues that they wouldn’t have. [...] But, you know, Google’s all about getting stuff done.
[...]
Is it allowed at Google to use Lisp and other languages?
No. No, it’s not OK. At Google you can use C++, Java, Python, JavaScript… I actually found a legal loophole and used server-side JavaScript for a project.
Mmmmm … key ?
Tags: Erlang, Google, Java, python, Ruby
So why not use JRuby? It’s just a java library. They can’t tell you “no” anymore than they can say not to use JSP, Velocity/Freemarker, or ant, right. Besides, JRuby is better than Ruby
Use Python.
Read the full article for the reasons behind the decision, they are missing here completely. JRuby is not ok. And an employer can tell you “no”.
No mention of the programmer tax. If everyone there is skilled in one or more of Python/Java/C++/JS and skilling up to be more of an expert in them, adding Ruby to the mix means most coworkers won’t be able to help competently without sinking a lot of time into learning Ruby.
And for what? Ruby is slow, has weird scoping rules, implementation problems and encourages tricks that can easily confuse people new to your project. If the languages Google weren’t aren’t good enough, they wouldn’t be that successful.
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If Google are willing to use something like Python, they should be willing to use nearly anything…
Funny how logic works in reality though.
Lisp is itself its own father.
I suspect the masters of Lisp could write a search application so powerful they would only need one machine given the rate of change we’re facing everyday.
It’s similar to the move Pi in which finding the answer will kill you. Lisp is God’s language.