Ask HN: How does high quality source code from Google looks like?

7 pointsandygrunwald5y ago5 comments

There is a lot of content out there regarding high-quality source code to write maintainable and clean code. This is not what I am looking for.

Every now and then, I read answers from Ex-Google Engineers on questions like "How is it like to be out of Google? What do you miss in the industry?". Often they say "the quality of source code".

I am curious: What is that special to the source code inside Google? What makes them "high quality"? Is it a well-commented code base? That people with less context get a grasp of what the piece of code is doing? Is it a strict following of company-wide coding guidelines? Is it the tooling around that supports the maintenance of the quality?

I am curious to hear answers from people who have experienced the code inside Google. And maybe have concrete examples?

Thanks all.

5 comments

tony5y ago

Go to https://github.com/google, but sort by language:

- C: https://github.com/google?q=&type=&language=c

- C++: https://github.com/google?q=&type=&language=c%2B%2B

- Go: https://github.com/google?q=&type=&language=go

- Java: https://github.com/google?q=&type=&language=java

Google's style guides: https://google.github.io/styleguide/

Hand-picked: https://source.chromium.org/chromium, https://android.googlesource.com/, https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/

Filter by subject: https://opensource.google/projects/explore/featured

Also you can do the same for https://github.com/microsoft and https://github.com/facebook

rwdim5y ago

See for yourself :) https://github.com/golang/go

This is a good example file:

https://github.com/golang/go/blob/master/src/crypto/crypto.g...

andygrunwaldOP5y ago

Thanks!

I am a huge fan of Go. My question here would be more like: Is this comparable? A lot of people outside of google contribute to Go. Are similar standards applied to the Go Review Process like to internally created software?

Wonnk135y ago

I think it says a lot more about how strict the readability standards are for submitting stuff to corp/production. Even code written by a moron by me looks decent after code review.

bjourne5y ago

Find out for yourself by studying Cromium's, TensorFlow's or V8's source code. It's all available online. Most of the code for Android is too.

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