alt Hacker NewsI had to laugh we he said it took a dozen people a couple years. That's a terribly small investment relative to the leverage over developer productivity, and pales in comparison to what eBay, IBM et al spent in similar large but specialized developer populations for integrated tooling.
I'd like to hear the perspective of the developer/user; the IDE provider has some incentive to take credit and imply high utilization reflects success rather than Google policy.
I'm interested in how tooling conditions developer expectations more broadly. I'd love to see a comparison of Linux OS development (all local+open+git, open but contributor hierarchy) vs Google (monorepo+required tooling, pre-allocated authority) from someone who's done both.
I was responsible for getting the investment and (and pushing on turndowns) in getting Google to one IDE, and also worked at IBM for a few years. I also spent lots of time talking with my counterparts in other places.
So I know what others spend and were spendingin similar environments in terms of actual dollars, and where it roughly goes.
So let me say - it was not a small investment, in part because the all-in costs of engineers are very different. I'm really unsure why you would think otherwise.
Unlike others, Google is also remarkably good at quantifying the actual value something provides in developer productivity/etc. Most engineers handwave this tremendously. Google has an amazing amount of telemetry. So i laugh when you talk about "the leverage over developer productivity" because the vast majority of companies i've worked at or talked with have almost no useful idea about their developer productivity (IE can't even account for the majority of their developers time at work), or how to invest effectively to do something about it. They can often account for <30% of time developers are spending at work, etc.
As for perspectives - there is plenty of sentinment and other data. Cider is overall one of the top 5 most loved tools at Google, and had well over 90% developer satisfaction IIRC.