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 …
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.
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...
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.
"... 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!
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