kchodorow

New radio in town

Just saw Google Play Music got a free, ad-supported version (blog post). I told Andrew about it: holyshit.

Pain-free OAuth with AppEngine

I do a lot of side projects (or at least start them) and implementing authentication is always like chewing on razor blades. I started another project recently using AppEngine and, bracing myself with a lot of caffeine and “suck it up, princess” attitude, I started doing “oauth appengine” searches. After digging through some documentation, IContinue reading “Pain-free OAuth with AppEngine”

API changes with extra cheese, hold the fear

When you make a change, how do you know what tests to run? If you’re lucky, no one else depends on your code so you can just run your own tests and you’re done. However, if you’re writing useful code, other people are probably going to start depending on it. Once that happens, it becomesContinue reading “API changes with extra cheese, hold the fear”

Have you ever looked at your build? I mean, really looked at your build?

Bazel has a feature that lets you see a graph of your build dependencies. It could help you debug things, but honestly it’s just really cool to see what your build is doing. To try it out, you’ll need a project that uses Bazel to build. If you don’t have one handy, here’s a tinyContinue reading “Have you ever looked at your build? I mean, really looked at your build?”

Hello, Bazel

Yesterday, my team open-sourced Bazel, the build system Google uses for most of its software. We have been working on open-sourcing Bazel for over a year, extricating dependencies, renaming and refactoring, and jumping through legal and political hoops. We were still missing a lot of stuff we wanted to add, but we thought it wouldContinue reading “Hello, Bazel”

Making wedding rings

This weekend, Andrew and I made our own wedding rings. We’ve been married for several years, but we never got around to getting rings. We found out about a guy in NYC who does ring-making workshops: you come to his studio and spend a day making personalized, custom rings. It was fun, and now weContinue reading “Making wedding rings”

Laptops are getting smaller all the time

As a “thank you” for hosting an intern this summer, Google gave me a little Android figurine. When I took it out of its box, a little backpack fell out, too. The backpack actually zipped and unzipped, but it didn’t have anything in it. So I decided to make a Macbook Air for it. First,Continue reading “Laptops are getting smaller all the time”

Teaching CS

I taught my first AP CS class on Thursday. I was wearing a Google teeshirt (it was a “nice” one, have to dress up for the first day of school) so the first thing the students asked me was, “Do you work for Google?” Then: “Can we visit Google?” And: “Will this help us getContinue reading “Teaching CS”

Sharing Programming

I’m going to be volunteer teaching AP computer science this fall at a NYC high school! Aside from actually prepping them for the AP exam, I’ve been thinking about how to share the programming culture I love with the students. Off the top of my head, I’d like to tell them about: Stuff you canContinue reading “Sharing Programming”

I will gladly write a test Tuesday for a program today

When I started at Google last year, I was really impressed by their testing. Every C++ class had three files: a <classsname>.h file, a <classsname>.cc, and a <classname>_test.cc. Every time something new is implemented, it has to be tested. The code review tool even warns you if you add a new .h without an accompanyingContinue reading “I will gladly write a test Tuesday for a program today”