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Not all of Google (yet), but there has been some significant lobbying for the use of git inside Google in the past by Linus himself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 (Google Tech Talk)

If you want to learn more about git and the motivation behind it, then I really recommend watching the linked video. I find it quite entertaining.

I'm not getting it either. This is a joke, right?

Right?

Why not delete code? Old/stale/unused code gets only in the way and doesn't serve any purpose. And if you really happen to need it later, it is readily available in your version control system.

I fully agree with your rule about quick and dirty. I'm currently rewriting a module that was "designed" with the "I just want to get it done" approach to software engineering.

What's the old saying? A few weeks of coding can easily save you 5 minutes of design?

We're also missing a deadline. But what is the point of meeting the deadline if we have to throw out the code afterwards and start over anyway? It is better to do it right the first time. A solid system a few days late beats a crappy system on time.

In my opinion, if the code is so complex and messy that you can't see whether individual pieces are correct, then it must be considered broken, even if it compiles and does something.

The discussion at LWN is also pretty insightful and explains how this happened.

http://lwn.net/Articles/281901/

I think the mantra "don't fix bugs that you don't understand" by Ben Laurie (as linked by randombit, thx) is a really important message to take away from this debacle.

procmail will do the job. From the homepage:

"Procmail can be used to [...] preprocess your mail, start any programs upon mail arrival [...]."

http://www.procmail.org/

This is a terrible idea.

While it may be adding some suspense when reading a book sequentially (for the first time), intentional errors are absolutely confusing whenever you intend to use the book as a reference.

What format do they use? It looks like neither SOAP nor XML-RPC. It looks more like some home-brew XML-dialect.

Are they reinventing the wheel, and if so, why?

I discovered that newer LCDs hurt my eyes due to their intense brightness. I causes me to squint, and if I do that for a whole day I get intense headaches.

My solution:

1) turn down the brightness

2) change your editor to a black background

Especially step 2 did wonders for me.

One absolute rule for any *nix-based server:

In /etc/ssh/sshd_config, disable root logins:

PermitRootLogin no

Even if you think your password ist strong. This will stop a majority of the brute-force password-guessing attacks. For extra credit, install denyhosts as well. It has stopped a _lot_ of bad guys trying to brute-force my servers.

Don't ever believe the professor doesn't know what you are really up to when you "take notes" with your laptop. At any given time, half of the laptop-using class is probably on Facebook, Myspace, or plays Solitaire.

You can still do it, of course, but be prepared to miss out on some good will on part of the instructor.

By that metric pugs [1,2] comes to mind. Learning both Haskell and Perl is probably not a bad idea, in terms of breadth. ;-)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pugs [2] http://www.pugscode.org/

Google summer of code 2008 is starting soon. Applications are due at the end of this month. Participating FOSS projects will post project ideas soon, so just visit some FOSS project that interest you and shop around their task list.

Actually, you may have to wait a couple of days, most FOSS projects are just getting started organizing their task lists.

GSoC is a great way to get into open source: you are getting paid, you have a personal mentor, and you get to work on something _you know_ people care about.