While I agree with alecbenzer's original point, I don't think that Dean and Sanjay created protobuf is a signal that they made the best decisions. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses even within the same job family.

I've encountered plenty of genius-level engineers when it comes to algorithms, architectures, and distributed system design that wrote GOD-AWFUL unreadable and unmaintainable code. I wouldn't trust them to design an API or a common framework optimized for usability.

In fact I almost wonder if intelligence is a hinderence in such cases. When you're too much like Cypher, and "don't even see the code", all code and all library choices feel equivalent.

Sure, but you didn't address any of the points in TFA.

Whether Dean and Ghemawat are high ranking or not, do the points stand? Is the design of protobuf solid?

It's possible to criticize one part of the article (calling people amateurs) without criticizing other parts of the article.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21873418

We've banned your accounts in this thread. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with; it eventually gets your main account banned as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Also, please don't create accounts for every few comments you post. We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines too.

HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but do need some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

You want HN to ge a community, start obeying the rules yourself.

HN is not a community, it’s a cargo cult where only certain thoughts are allowed and you ban people who think differently, no matter how well they present their argument or how polite they are.

Further, you engage in ad hominem and dishonest attacks, make calling and violation of every other rule in your rule book you capriciously enforce against everyone else.

Because of this, you have no standing to expect anyone to ever respect your rules.

This is why this site is considered a joke to the rest of the world and the tech community.

It’s the epitome of Bay Area smelling-ones-own-farts, and you’re oblivious.

You need to seperate publicity statements or interview answers from technical contributions. They are so incompatible as to be meaningless comparisons and are intended for totally different uses. I doubt he or any senior engineer at any company would make a statement like that in a design discussion or product review, but they'd all turn around wave hands at the future like that over beers with a journalist.

What is the point of your justification? That it's ok to spout nonsense during interviews? If so that's a weird position to take.

Alright, I'll condense: High level statements about vague possibilities are perfectly fine in some settings, but not in otheres. They sure smell like bullshit in a highly technical setting, or to people who always take the most technical angle.

You don't get to lead thousands of people by making publicly offensive statements, even accidentally. So yes, that does lead to more boring answers to newspapers.

Politicians don't swear in public, but they sure do in private. I'm sure a smaller conversation with Jeff would be fascinating.

> You don't get to lead thousands of people by making publicly offensive statements ...

That's not correct. There are (current) examples of people leading thousands (or more) people by making publicly offensive statements.

It's just the statements are polarising (on purpose), to create feelings of inclusion among the supporters + and blame [social problems?] on the people being pointed at.

If you're going to be an edgelord and call Jeff Dean an "idiot", have the guts not to do it on a throwaway account.

Why? So you can tar, feather and throw him into the fire for crimethink?

TIL filling time in an interview instead of being as concise as possible makes you an idiot. I thought it was just called 'being a good interview subject'.

Does that retroactively make protobuffers stupid too?

It doesn't but I don't get why saying someone is smart makes their work better when smart people obviously make stupid decisions and give stupid answers. I've used protobuffs, they're fine. I was riffing on Kenton's justification.

My only point was that it's absurd to call them "amateurs", and that the author damages his own credibility by doing so.

Because being smart is related to making less stupid decisions? Think about it in terms of probability.

Smarter -> less probability of making stupid decisions and giving stupid answers.

Dumber -> more probability of making stupid decisions and giving stupid answers.

That's like 100 words to say "Yes."