The document discusses the principles of simplicity in software development, emphasizing the importance of building new systems on established ones to reduce complexity. It highlights GitHub's commitment to simplicity, modularity, and proven tools over new technologies. The content includes references to various software components and emphasizes the need for predictable, community-driven approaches to building software.

1. Building New on top of old:
The argument for simplicity
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Sam Lambert
Director of Systems, GitHub

2. How people build software
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Building New on Top of Old
The Argument for Simplicity

3. How people build software!
Sam Lambert
Director of Systems
! github.com/samlambert
! twitter.com/isamlambert
! samlambert.com
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4. How people build software!
GitHub
Code hosting and collaboration
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Where do we work?

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Hubot

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Hubot

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Hubot

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Hubot

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OVER 11 MILLION USERS
29 MILLION REPOSITORIES
What is GitHub?

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Scale can be relative
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Who are the Systems Organization?
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GIT AND GIT SYSTEMS
DATABASE SYSTEMS

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The Systems Philosophy
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Above all else, GitHub is a Unix shop. We
create programs and tools that follow the
basic principles of Unix: simplicity,
modularity, composability.
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We believe that it is always easier to
add complexity than it is to remove it.
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We are excited by new tools, but we
never use them just to use them. We
experiment, but we will always prefer
what is proven over what is new.
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Simplicity
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18. How people build software!
Why?
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Is this wrong?
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20. How people build software!
The Stack
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MySQL
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Ruby
Rails
C
ElasticSearch
Javascript
Git
Shell

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Pragmatism

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What do we get?

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Sleep!

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Predictability

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Right tool for the job?

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Community knowledge

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MySQL

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Why do *we* naturally build
complex systems?

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Innovation

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The role of new technologies
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MySQL
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No approach you can’t borrow from
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Brubeck
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Brubeck’s feature is that it has no features. It is a
very simple C daemon that uses state-of-the-art
technologies such as “a while loop” and “more than
one thread”.
- Vicent Marti
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“
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40. How people build software!
GitHub Enterprise
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Multiple repos, complex build process
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The rewrite
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LXE
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#!
/bin/bash
mkdir
-­‐p
./chroot
debootstrap
-­‐-­‐arch=amd64
precise
./chroot
chroot
./chroot
apt-­‐get
install
...
cp
-­‐r
<whatever>
./chroot/etc
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Reduction in complexity
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1986
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Iteration
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Are we strengthening our
foundations or rebuilding them?
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@EricaJoy
@EricaStanley
@eanakashima
@skamille

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Questions?