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Stanford Seminar - Google's Steve Yegge on GROK

10 videos recommended on HN
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3 HN users recommended this talk4 months2013–2024 score 4.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN refers to it as the main public description of Google's internal code analysis tooling, and as a precursor of ideas like LSP.

Steve Yegge's Stanford seminar on GROK, Google's internal large-scale, cross-language source code analysis system. It covers how the system helps with code search and understanding across Google's huge codebase.

“this talk by Steve Yegge was both entertaining and informative” (HN, 2013)

1 strong recommendations · 3 recommendations · 7 citations · Talks · intermediate

11 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@michaelwww Apr 2013 Recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: What's the best technical talk you've heard?
I wouldn't want to use the term "best" because there are so many good ones in various areas, but this talk by Steve Yegge was both entertaining and informative. Stanford Seminar - Google's Steve Yegge on GROK (large scale source code analysis) [this video]
Entertaining, informative talk on large-scale source code analysis.
@SwellJoe Jul 2016 Recommends
on HN thread Software Heritage
Read more
Yes, and they've open sourced part of that here (at least, I think it is related, and is also called "Code Search"): [link] But, their public code search was not the same as the internal thing, as far as I know. The internal beast sounds kind of awesome. Here's his talk about it from a few years ago: [this video] I think the really useful thing (beyond a mere search engine that has indexed a lot of source code) is the comprehension of the "guzzintas" and "guzzouttas" of the code, more than merely a naive word search; i.e. knowing how pieces interact, so you can search for functions that work with a particular kind of object, for example, or objects that have the same properties, or code that interacts with the same API you're working with, whatever.
Talk on Google's internal code search and code comprehension.
@dunk010 Feb 2024 Recommends
on HN thread The Second Golden Age of Emacs
LSP is basically an open(-ish) source implementation of Google’s internal tool called Grok. Grok was made by Steve Yegge, a formerly famous tech blogger. Steve Yegge uses emacs, and half his motivation was to equalise editors by moving the language processing elements to an external place that’s shareable by all. He has a great talk on it: [this video] . So it’s, like, not an accident that emacs can leverage this :-D. Though I never see anyone giving him credit.
Yegge's talk on Grok, precursor of LSP.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@shadowmatter Jul 2013 Cites it
on HN thread The Woman at the Heart of Everything Google Builds
As another year ex-Googler, I'd say this is BS. Everything that superseded the "gconfig" days was pretty amazing, and IIRC the team behind it in NY did quite well for themselves. Steve Yegge wrote GROK, which is an internal tool, and I'm pretty sure no one around here looks down on him: [this video]
Steve Yegge's talk on GROK, an internal Google tool.
@bodski Jul 2013 Cites it
on HN thread Cello: Higher level programming in C
Steve Yegge at Google is/was involved in a project called 'Grok' which sounds pretty similar to that. I really hope it catches on also. [link] [this video] HN discussion: [link]
Yegge's Grok project at Google resembles the discussed project.
@michaelwww Jul 2013 Cites it
on HN thread Ask HN: What happened to Steve Yegge after 'quitting'
He actually has been working on a big data analysis problem for the last four years, which is presumably why he was asked to speak, so your characterization of him as all talk and no action is incorrect [this video]
Shows Yegge working on big data analysis at Google.
@tree_of_item Jul 2014 Cites it
on HN thread Building Sourcegraph, a large-scale code search engine in Go
This looks very nice; automated access to and analysis of the huge amounts of source code on the Internet could be a game changer for programmers everywhere. As an aside, when I saw Google in the URL I thought that this was a rebranding of Steve Yegge's "Grok"[0] project. Does anyone know what's happened to that? [0] [this video]
Source for Yegge's Grok project at Google.
@michaelwww Sep 2015 Cites it
on HN thread Google Is 2B Lines of Code, All in One Place
For those interested, the source analyzer Steve Yegge was working on called GROK has been renamed Kythe. I don't know how useful it turned out to be for those 2B LOC. [link] Steve Yegge, from Google, talks about the GROK Project - Large-Scale, Cross-Language source analysis. [2012] [this video]
Talk on GROK, large-scale cross-language source analysis.

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