[xfs]

From Steve Yegge:

What really happened is that China hacked Google, and it pissed Google off when they finally discovered it, many months later. This wasn’t some small intrusion or data breach. It was a systemic, coordinated, widespread, very deep hack, which among other things, gave China all of Google’s source code. It was very similar in scope and ambition to the Solar Winds hack recently out of Russia. It forced Google to completely rethink their security, which at the time was an Igloo model (hard on the outside, soft on the inside, a Gary Larson reference I think), and they had to migrate to where internal access was also limited, which took years.

I’ll share with you, confidentially wink wink, that most companies way overvalue their source code. It’s actually their engineers who are their biggest asset, because the engineers can reproduce the source code if it’s lost (quite quickly at that), whereas the source code can’t do fuck-all on its own. Moreover, most source code bases are so ugly that you couldn’t give them away. But Google had what they now call “HIP” (High-value Intellectual Property) scattered through their source code, which are the tuning parameters and constants for various algorithms and AI models which are the true Secret Sauce to Google’s Search and Ads dominance.

[ComradePhil]

> because the engineers can reproduce the source code if it’s lost (quite quickly at that)

Does anyone really believe this?

[lozenge]

Note, it says "most companies".

At both small companies I worked at, the real value was in the business relationships built up (suppliers etc). The code could be rewritten. It wouldn't be bug-compatible, but all the ideas and design were backed up in engineers' minds.

[dijit]

I can believe it.

There are even advantages from a clean slate methodology; if there’s sufficient buy in from management.

Reason being: if you have done things before and bore the weight of architectural misgivings, you can clearly reproduce the software.

The biggest barrier to doing this normally is:

A) time pressure.

B) pressure to use existing log available tech

C) pressure to be cheap (which is manifested most often in A&B but is it’s own thing too).

This causes “large rewrites” to be rushed, subpar and lesser quality as the emphasis often isn’t on getting to feature parity.

Regardless, if google lost their code- entirely, we would probably have search by next week, auth in a fortnight, mail by next month and something approximating google cloud by the end of the year.

Because a lot of the really hard lessons have been learned, a reimplementation is just time.

[aleksiy123]

If the comparison is.

1. All of Google's Source, All New Engineers

Vs.

2. All of Google's Engineers, No source

I'd probably bet on #2 getting up and running quicker.

[mhitza]

I do. If, and only if, you build up the exact same thing. Once engineers band together for a rewrite that changes project architectural, conceptual, and engineering principles, then you're looking at a runaway deadline.