I generally agree that HN commenters tend not to get impressed by things.
That said, I don't agree with this:
>The Google search engine brings in $billions each year, and is one of the most important software projects in history, but I guarantee there are developers at Google right now complaining about how crappy the core code base is.
You can appreciate the performance of the Google search engine at scale, while still being annoyed by how crappy the core code base is. (I have zero knowledge of what the codebase is actually like, but I would guess that like most legacy code written in a legacy language without algebraic data types, it's probably a bit of a mess at this point).
As an aside it would be great if anyone who actually has seen google search source code can provide a general idea about the code quality. One imagines it should be of thr highest quality being the core google product.
I know someone who works at Google, and their initial impression of the code base was that it's the highest quality large codebase (or largest high quality codebase?) they'd ever seen. Apparently all the qualifications and reviews really do help.
I saw parts of the codebase while I was there. It definitely has dark corners. But given it's size and the complexity of the problems it's solving it's wasn't that bad.
Of course at any given time while I was there the team was running several different refactor/fix/delete/cleanup projects. It's a continuous and well funded effort.
That said, I don't agree with this:
>The Google search engine brings in $billions each year, and is one of the most important software projects in history, but I guarantee there are developers at Google right now complaining about how crappy the core code base is.
You can appreciate the performance of the Google search engine at scale, while still being annoyed by how crappy the core code base is. (I have zero knowledge of what the codebase is actually like, but I would guess that like most legacy code written in a legacy language without algebraic data types, it's probably a bit of a mess at this point).