HW2: Responses

A response to Silver Bullet, Cherry Picking, and Google Code Repo:

No Silver Bullet seems to believe that large-scale coding will always be difficult, and that there are no easy solutions to this. It’s pretty outdated, although while version-control and automated testing have changed, many of the fundamentals of software engineering haven’t. Nonetheless, it seems to have been almost completely disproved by first git, then Google’s versioning control system, in which a massively automated super-git-like-repository allows users to add code, test it, and incorporate it into the main program structure with extreme ease; all despite the ridiculous scale of their combined projects. Perhaps there is a silver bullet after all.

Cherry Picking, meanwhile, speaks of how difficult it can be to determine what code should be taken from a branch, and why; while also giving some recommendations on how to effectively find (and fix) bugs in a responsible, scientific, and documentation-heavy manner. It brings up many valid points about how tricky excessive branches can end up being. Again, this lends even more credibility to Google’s own no-branch system.

Finally, Google Code Repo, which really just made me super envious of having such a talented and dedicated support team to create and maintain such a glorious beast of a version control system. It’s pretty spectacular, and really makes me appreciate just how much Google has legitimately achieved despite (or perhaps because of) their occasional ruthless business move.

Really, all three articles just make me want to use Google’s system for… everything? Maybe someday we’ll get enough people to leave Google over ethical issues that they can form their own version control company, and make a rival to git.