A former coworker recently asked me about what had worked well (and not) at MongoDB. I realized that I actually know a bunch of things about running an open source project/startup, some of which may not be common knowledge, so I figured I’d share some here. Things changed dramatically as the company grew and theContinue reading “Non-technical advice for startups and open source projects”
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Positive reinforcement learning through barbacoa
Yesterday I had some extra barbacoa that Domino was super excited about and Andrew suggested I use it to teach him (Domino, not Andrew) how to lie down on command. I waited until he lay down on his own, said “yes!” and gave him a piece of barbacoa. He leapt up and ate the barbacoaContinue reading “Positive reinforcement learning through barbacoa”
New radio in town
Just saw Google Play Music got a free, ad-supported version (blog post). I told Andrew about it: holyshit.
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”
