Another googleturd
Surprise surprise, google release yet another half baked idea, and techies everywhere bend over and demand that the biggest black object in sight be crammed up their orifices so they can ooh and ahh and generally behave like a bunch of desperate teenagers aching for a fisting.
This time it’s google code, and I am astounded (though I should be used to this by now) that anyone in their right mind thinks that this is an improvement over anything equivalent that already exists.
Granted, it does have one tiny benefit over sourceforge, which is that you can access its source control and get up to date files. It’s far worse than every other project hosting facility there is out there in every other respect (java.net now offers svn, so the svn support is not such a differentiator anymore.)
What’s odd about this particular offering is that while google stuff is generally useless and good for eye candy, it’s usually reasonably well executed. In this case it seems like they just rounded up a bunch of apache hippie types and let them futz about with this idea just to stop them from damaging anything important.
For a start, there are some rather important features missing that make this repository, at best, a good backup solution and nothing else. There’s no file repository, so you’d have to go elsewhere to actually host your releases. In fact, there’s no release mechanism or notification support either, so even if you did by some miracle get some morons interested, you have no way of keeping them updated. The list of project users is also what you’d expect an intern to come up with; it’s just a list of logins, with no real names or any way of seeing who ‘flibbity.gibbet’ actually is, or any way of contacting said person.
Even more surprising, there isn’t a single innovative feature here. What’s so bad about having a nice searchbar at the top of the svn browsers, instead of the skanky faggotarse default apache svn view? Why can’t I use google pages to write docs? Why can’t it host my documentation for me and make it searchable via googlemagic?
Trying out this pile of worthless gunk reveals even more flaws. Really basic stuff that shows that Google apparently has a severe QA engineer shortage, or thinks that for trivial toys like this, it doesn’t matter if it’s halfassed. For example, if a project has ‘Apache License 2.0′ specified, the link doesn’t go to the 2.0 license, but to the generic Apache licenses page.
This sloppiness is prevalent throughout the app. For example, all ‘home page’ type links go to code.google.com, but nothing pointing to the hosting home, code.google.com/hosting. You’d have to go all the way to the top, then drill down to get to the main entry point.
The form validation is also bizarrely crap. On the project creation page, the create project button is disabled unless you have a description and summary > 3 characters. All good and well, but if your project name is just one char, that’s fine, the button is enabled. When you submit however, you’re told that the project name is too short. What’s so evil about having the same validation mechanism for all the fields? Maybe I’m a dimwitted user, but it’s not entirely intuitive to me that I MUST specify a summary and description, and that they must each be more than 3 characters long.
Of course, if you’re the kind of guy who likes to create dummy projects just to write bile entries about how much google sucks, then just use Safari. You can happily hit enter there and sneak in 2 character summaries if you so wish.
The issue tracker is somewhat interesting, I do like the freeform label support, but of course, for the sake of consistency with the rest of the app, it’s useless for any real world projects. There’s no way to add custom tags, so you can’t for example add tags for your specific versions. This of course means that for every single issues posted, the first comment you’ll get back from the developer is ‘err, so what version is this again?’
There’s also the issue of stupid defaulting in the issue tracker. I can click new issue, then click submit. There’s no detection for the default content being specified, so it’s very easy to spam a project with a ton of boilerplate issues.
Editing an issue is equally badly done, there’s a ‘Add a Comment and Make Changes’ title, but all that is under it is a ‘enter your comments’ textfield. Where’s the make changes bit? Ah, you click on the textfield, and the rest of the form magically appears! Yet more bad jarring UI.
All in all, an abysmal effort. Shame on you google, but the real blame here is for all the google fanboys who allow them to get away with such tawdry offerings. In any other company, this sort of half assed effort would never be released, and someone would be held accountable if it was. Maybe google developers pride themselves on not being in ‘that sort of company’, but in their place, I wouldn’t feel so smug about being so sloppy.
July 31st, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Yeah, I didn’t get this. No one can accuse the biler of being vague. These are laser-guided biles of late.
July 31st, 2006 at 6:22 pm
Personally I think your blog has been sucking ass lately but this entry is right on the money. If you think Google Code is lame, check out GTalk. I dare you to find a less feature rich IM. You can’t even establish a conversation with multiple people in the same channel. Utter garbage. I find it odd that a company that is so selective in hiring, puts out such rediculously bad software.
July 31st, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Hani, how about applying for QA position in google?
August 1st, 2006 at 4:32 am
The latest issue of Software Test and Performance does provide a glimpse inside of the QA department.
http://www.stpmag.com/retrieve/stp-0608.htm
“Google uses open source and they build it out. They figure that they can pay for [a tool] or not pay for [a tool], but it?s still [a tool]?and at least with open source, we can modify the code when we need it to do [something that isn?t natively supported].?
The following is even more “insightful”
“…This is an incredibly insightful statement. While few organizations have Google?s pool of talented developers, most of the tweaks that open-source tools need to meet a user?s specific needs don?t require any rocket science.”
The above statement begs the question: Why was it not put into the tool in the first place?
I spend a significant amount of time looking at possible integrations with open source and commercial solutions and to be honest I am always frustrated by the amount of time I do spend looking at the source code. I was always much more productive in my CORBA days when I had a standard specification that outlined a clear and concise contractual API.
August 1st, 2006 at 8:03 am
GTalk? Better than sliced bread for consultants behind very restrictive firewalls.
August 1st, 2006 at 9:49 am
I think Google Code rocks. I’m going to take all the code from my JSF ramblings on my blog and create a project there. BTW, I find it ironic that although I profess to love JSF so much, that I would spend days, even weeks, trying to get a silly UI component to work in JSF. I think I am beginning to understand why developers have been slow to hop on the JSF bandwagon.
So let me end this eloquent post by reiterating my famous blogged words:
“Schizzle my nizzle, this party aint no fizzle fizzle, it is the schizzle nizzle…. YO!”
And let me add that “Google Code is the Shizzle!”
Rick
August 1st, 2006 at 3:12 pm
It seems someone took over from Hani after the first paragraph. Not content-wise, but graphic content-wise.
August 1st, 2006 at 4:31 pm
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Man, am I tired of suchlike foolishness !
No, software development is not ‘rocket science’.
It is less well understood, less well supported in terms of time and money, and significantly more complicated. Developing a large software system is perhaps the most complicated intellectual task ever undertaken by human beings.
Piss on the fucktards who attempt to belittle my profession in thjeir ignorance ! Pee upon them, I say !
Hrrmmph.
August 3rd, 2006 at 4:08 pm
Perhaps Google’s idea was to release a piece of software that is intentionally feature incomplete so that users can respond, provide feedback and help guide evolution of the project. “Release early, release often” just like it says on the Google Code home page.
BTW, while I agree the Gtalk client sucks big time, the chat integration with Gmail is kick-ass, especially for people that can’t install or run an IM client at the office.
August 4th, 2006 at 2:13 pm
Google is suffering from David Lee Roth Syndrome. You get all the best people and you also get their overinflated, conflict seeking egos; at first all is well an few good things come out of the project, but eventually the egos clash in a big way and you get a lot of uninteresting crap because people are not working together and mostly arguing mundate facts.
Just because someone has a PhD and passed their pointless interview trivia test does not mean they can produce anything more than a technical paper about the merit of having rubberized mouse gliders as opposed to pcv (or something similarly over-specific and useless).
Google Code is utter crap, I tried it and went back to Source Forge; it may get better or it may be just like every other beta crapduct Google has put out. Other than Google search, every product they put out has been subpar, devoid of useful features and incomplete (not even worthy of the beta tag, more like early alpha).
Bile on!
August 7th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Oh sure Hani, you sneer now, but in a few years after my crack team of L337 alpha H4X3Rs have honed and elevated our warez to mystic levels of quality, I *will* be able to say: “All your code are belong to us”
Be excellent to each other
Sergey
August 11th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
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What ? We were not talking about Microsoft or NASA here … we were talking about Googly. Let’s not get carried away.
Although I find it hard to agree with Fate’s bile for once … who cares if the marketurds at Googly put up a Web site ? The Wiggly One is too apathetic these days to work up a real fiery hatred for obvious sales ploys. After all, we can just ignore it … in fact I think that is one of the items on my agenda this afternoon. Let me check …
Yes, there it is : ‘ignore posturing salesmen’.
Hmmm. Actually this item appears to be part of the ‘Daily Standup Meeting For Fragile Teams Best Practices’ … whatever that is. Well, your Uncle doesn’t care how it got on the daily plan – he just Executes the Task. He is, after all, a professional …
August 25th, 2006 at 11:48 am
It’s sad now that Hani got a real job. Sort of.
Less bile per month.
I just wanted everyone to know that my own personal hatred of almost everything still burns bright. I hope we all feel the same.
August 25th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Kindly bile the ineffably stupid closure proposal, please.