Ask HN: What are the code bases like at the really big product companies?

6 points·jaxn··3 comments

I'm not asking for trade secrets, but I am curious what the code looks like. I've never worked on a team over 4 people before and can't picture what it must be like to browse the repository.

For those that have that kind of experience, what's it like?

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Really similar to any other repo you've seen. I would say the biggest difference is that there are many private libraries being used liberally. It's odd to see that sprinkled in throughout, whereas most codebases you understand where/why all the libs are being used. Maybe that sounds obvious but consider that big companies are going to use their own versions of some popular libs.

But speaking of that, another diff is that the big companies do often use popular libs, but the versions in use are quite behind. Usually because they have a policy to thoroughly review any libs first, even version upgrades.

Usually all code is public, as most companies trust their employees and consider that bad actions could happen even with all the protections. An exception to this is that I've heard some parts of Android isn't public to all employees at Google.

It's also interesting that some companies put the entire codebase under 1 repository.

There are plenty of open-source projects where there are WAY more than 4 contributors/team members. The Python language implementation. LLVM. Linux. Firefox. Have a look.

Google has written a bit about their monorepo culture. Here, for example: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stor...

Check this out to browse what they are using: https://stackshare.io/stacks

Find some open source projects by them, and have a look: https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode

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