back to article Tech bad-boy Uber crafts tool to make staff follow the rules in future (er, coding rules, that is)

Despite its astonishing reputation for obliterating HR policy, resisting transit regulations and bending other laws, taxi scourge Uber is rather keen to keep its code clean and ensure it follows the rules. Developers working for the ride app biz have created a software analysis tool called NEAL to enforce code quality, and …

  1. JohnFen

    Uber invented a way to ensure that their software can make the company behave as if it were ethical? Wow! That's a stupendous technical accomplishment!

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      No, not really. What Uber has done is ensure that the code it writes to screw over its competition is properly written, maybe even optimized, and that it respects coding standards.

      But it will still screw over the competition every chance it gets.

  2. John H Woods

    They've reinvented the taxi ...

    ... they might as well reinvent the wheel

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You lost me at the headline “Uber to follow rules”.

  4. Horse Sense

    You lost me at the headline by putting Uber and rules in the same sentence.

    1. a pressbutton

      Re: The future...

      You lost me before the end of the headline.

      I went straight to the comments and now I cannot find my way out

      Help!

      ... but I do have a strong opinion.

      1. wowfood

        Re: The future...

        This is the comments? I thought I was still reading the article!

    2. thegroucho

      @Horse Sense

      Surely if concatenated with the word 'breaking'?

  5. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

    Of all the things to worry about

    Most IDEs can automatically flag suspicious code and obvious inefficiencies. More advanced linters are REALLY HARD to design. I have a deep hatred of the garbage that Checkstyle forces people to write because it doesn't understand scope, visibility, and project expectations. Making a new linter doesn't seem like it should be high on the list of really hard work that needs to be done at Uber.

    1. Someone Else Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Of all the things to worry about

      Amen to that!. And given how well lint works in general, and the Uber corporate "culture" (I use the word loosely), I set the over-under on how long the dev's take to figure out how to bypass it and render it utterly useless (like the rest of its ilk) at two weeks.

      And I'll take the under...

  6. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    I suspect it's away of being able to say "You're codes crap" without it sounding personal.

    Historically "lint" existed because the Unix C compiler was (AIUI) fast but fairly loose in it's precision, assuming its users were all competent and were only violating the strict letter of the language (as far as there was one) for reasons it would not understand (like needing to trade speed for portability).

    But to ensure tighter, more legal code Lint was developed.

    However making a cross language "lint" is much harder.

    What's are the "semantic primes" (to use a linguistics term) for all languages? What has to be checked in "language specific" modules? and so o.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I suspect it's away of being able to say "You're gone"

      "... because the company has a dozen engineering teams in different locations around the world."

      Making coding more controllable and uniform in style and quality (laudable goals) has a side-effect of making the coders more fungible (not so laudable socially).

      I have no knowledge of Uber, but could this permit the MO where interns never seem to get in, teams get relocated but never by moving people, high salaries but with unspoken drop-dead dates, and all those other mechanisms of minimizing permanent salary outlays? Hey, the gig economy without calling it that!

  7. clocKwize

    Why is this news? There are many linters. This one isn't special, other than being created by a company thats generally in the news for other reasons.

  8. DontFeedTheTrolls
    Pirate

    I'm guessing being open source someone will have checked, but the cynical side of me wonders if this tool sends code back to Uber to steal...

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They probably just downloaded the emission testing software from a VW and reverse-engineered it.

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