Google and Python

[Alex Martelli]

Bryan Olson <fakeaddress at nowhere.org> wrote:
   ...
> TheFlyingDutchman asked of someone:
> > Would you know what technique the custom web server uses
> > to invoke a C++ app 
> 
> No, I expect he would not know that. I can tell you
> that GWS is just for Google, and anyone else is almost
> certainly better off with Apache.

Or lighttpd, like YouTube (cfr
<http://trac.lighttpd.net/trac/wiki/PoweredByLighttpd>).


> How does Google use Python? As their scripting-language
> of choice. A fine choice, but just a tiny little piece.
> 
> Maybe Alex will disagree with me. In my short time at
> Google, I was uber-nobody.

YouTube (one of Google's most valuable properties) is essentially
all-Python (except for open-source infrastructure components such as
lighttpd).  Also, at Google I'm specifically "Uber Tech Lead, Production
Systems": while I can't discuss details, my main responsibilities relate
to various software projects that are part of our "deep infrastructure",
and our general philosophy there is "Python where we can, C++ where we
must".  Python is definitely not "just a tiny little piece" nor (by a
long shot) used only for "scripting" tasks; if the mutant space-eating
nanovirus should instantly stop the execution of all Python code, the
powerful infrastructure that has been often described as "Google's
secret weapon" would seize up.

The internal web applications needed to restore things, btw, would seize
up too; as I already said I can't give details of the ones I'm
responsible for (used by Google's network specialists, reliability
engineers, hardware technicians, etc), but Guido did manage to get
permission to talk about his work, Mondrian
(<http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2006/11/google-mondrian.html
>) -- that's what we all use to review code, whatever language it's in,
before it can be submitted to the Google codebase (code reviews are a
mandatory step of development at Google).  Internal web applications are
the preferred way at Google to make any internal functionality
available, of course.


Alex