Top all-time · #1947
blog.bradfieldcs.com
Company blog · blog.bradfieldcs.comprogrammingcareer
blog.bradfieldcs.com is the company blog at blog.bradfieldcs.com, writing about programming and career. Since 2016, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 46 times, most often “You Are Not Google (2017)”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (18) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog mostly for 'You Are Not Google', an essay arguing that companies should not copy Google-scale engineering choices. Commenters cite it repeatedly in discussions of over-engineering.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 18 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- You Are Not Google (2017)17 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2017-06-07
- The cost of forsaking C3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-02-13
- Cutting Through to What Matters: Why Software Engineers Should Think Like Chefs2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-01
- The Secret Life of Your Login Credentials2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-03-12
- All the Talks from Systems We Love2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-12-15
- An Introduction to Hashing in the Era of Machine Learning2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-04-17
- Learn How Computers Work2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-10-19
- Being confidently programming language agnostic2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2016-12-31
What Hacker News says?
I think this is worth mentioning again: https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “What every software engineer should know about Apache Kafka”Submitted You Are Not Google (2017) as a story · 1623 points
HN discussionA lot of programmers talk about K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) when it comes to writing their software but don't extend that to their build tools, or how they deploy it. Just like the "you are not google talk"^1 people tend to overengineer solutions for a problem they could have in the future. I'm certainly guilty of this. At work I can't just write some python code in an editor, I have to write and pass around Jup…
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “We Don’t Use Docker”Submitted Performance Reviews Are a Waste of Time as a story · 597 points
HN discussionOz Nova nailed it nicely in "You Are Not Google" https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “Dear friend, you have built a Kubernetes”Submitted How to avoid picking the wrong technology just because it's cool as a story · 398 points
HN discussionSurprising and noteworthy are not the same thing, but pretending they are definitely lets you make your non-sequitur reply seem like it addresses mine... It's noteworthy when tech projects are successful and simple, because in the industry there is a widespread tendency to try and replicate what "the big guys" are doing, and often times what they're doing is extremely convoluted. In other words, it is significant wh…
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb?gi=9c2b0729a254
on “Pieter Levels Makes $600k a Year from Nomad List and Remote OK”Submitted You are not Google (2017) as a story · 259 points
HN discussionOf course you're being downvoted. But I'm totally with you on this one. As someone currently responsible for migrating services to gRPC at my company, I always say that the main reason people are switching is "because Google." While there are merits to gRPC and protobuf, I don't think there are enough advantages to throw away REST and JSON and all the tooling around it. The moment you start switching, you start feel…
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “Why We’re Switching to gRPC”Submitted An Introduction to Hashing in the Era of Machine Learning as a story · 247 points
HN discussionC. I read K&R and did every exercise in it this year, and it really changed how I thought about programming, even in higher level languages. Specifically, I feel like it's made me a lot more considerate about algorithm design and detecting edge cases. More justification: https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/the-cost-of-forsaking-c-1139864...
Comment linking /the-cost-of-forsaking-c-113986438784
on “Ask HN: What skills to acquire in 2019?”Submitted Being confidently programming language agnostic as a story · 235 points
HN discussionRelevant: You Are Not Google [1] [1] https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “A pattern language for microservices”Submitted The cost of forsaking C as a story · 185 points
HN discussion> How else would you scale to meet peak demand without being wasteful? I can only speak to the banks I've have the opportunity to work with who stayed on prem or built their own internal cloud infra; what you call waste, they consider a premium/cost of business for security and resilience. I'm sure a lot of folks would've said the same thing about JIT supply chains (that had been squeezed to be as efficient as possi…
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “How we secure Monzo's banking platform”Submitted In 2017, learn every language as a story · 153 points
HN discussionThere are a number of blog posts by people such as Tim Bray, Steve Yegge, and others - as well as internal engineering blogs (at least there is one at Facebook and several at Google). I read these on a regular basis (Yegge's hasn't been updated in a while), but only to take away ideas and learn about new technologies. Their approach is almost certainly not the right approach for you, because you are not Google ( htt…
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “Ask HN: Resources on how Google/Facebook etc. approach software design?”Submitted All the Talks from Systems We Love as a story · 17 points
HN discussionI'm reminded of Joe Hellerstein's (and Oz Nova's summation of it, You Are Not Google [1] [2]) about even actual Big Data people getting their scale wrong and thinking they're Google: The thing is there’s like 5 companies in the world that run jobs that big. For everybody else… you’re doing all this I/O for fault tolerance that you didn’t really need. People got kinda Google mania in the 2000s: “we’ll do everything t…
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “What’s the origin of the phrase “big data doesn’t fit in excel”?”Submitted In 2017, learn every language as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> as a side note there is whole list of bad stuff that medium/small companies do just because "goog/fb does that", but they should never do Indeed. There is a great post about this mistake causing companies to do wrong technical choices titled "you are not Google". Worth a read if you're not familiar with it already (already been on hn twice as well). https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “Hiring Myths Common in Hacker News Discussions”Submitted Learn How Computers Work as a story · 4 points
HN discussionMy head is nodding at the intention here, but it's important to remember this reactionary attitude can be damaging as well. That is missing from the post. Specifically, reactionary conservatism about tools and services can be a competitive disadvantage. In several workplaces I have seen this attitude co-mingle with pride in original code, and result in a counter-productive NIH (Not Invented Here)[0] attitude (reinve…
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “On Software Tooling”Submitted What Your Standup Reveals About Your Team as a story · 4 points
HN discussionTwo articles on this topic: You are Not Google (my favorite): https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb A piece from my Notes to a Young Software Engineer that likens engineering media to a bazaar, not a mirror of the industry: Beware Engineering Media: https://www.nemil.com/on-software-engineering/beware-enginee... (Martin Fowler's YAGNI article is also great)
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “You are not Google. You are not Netflix”Submitted All the Talks from Systems We Love as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI'm really inclined to say that Citus is better suited for the vast majority of companies, since You Are Not Google [1]. For example, forcing everyone to synchronously replicate using Raft all the time seems like overkill, and incurs a huge latency cost. Furthermore, I think Citus has a head start on being a mature project, since it builds upon the back of the already-mature Postgres for things like query planning.…
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “Citus 6.2: Concurrent index creation and complex queries for multi-tenant dbs”Submitted The Secret Life of Your Login Credentials as a story · 3 points
HN discussionWell, I meant for startups, which I thought was implicit given that the original blog post was about "Startup Mistakes". Yes, I agree that an key-value store that lets you do embarrassingly parallel reads and writes is useful for scaling, but has't it been said enough that You Are Not Google[1]? [1] https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
Comment linking /you-are-not-google-84912cf44afb
on “Startup Mistakes: Choice of Datastore”Submitted The cost of forsaking C as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
