LinkedIn is 99% Java but 100% Mac
As a podcast addict I’m constantly looking for good shows. As far as I can tell, The Java Posse (from Tor Norbye, Carl Quinn, Dick Wall, and Joe Nuxoll) is the best one out there. I’ve been listening to the show for the last two years and I’m very impressed that they’ve maintained such high quality for so long now. Shortly after joining LinkedIn I created a new LinkedIn Group for Java Posse, which has been growing rapidly.
A few days ago I heard the last episode while enjoying the ease of use of Twitters API. It was a nice surprise to hear the announcement about LinkedIn being elected the “Java Website of the Week”. It was even nicer to hear them praising the famous Linker Steve Ganz.
It seems that the announcement is a result of a blog post from the “Break it Down” blog commenting on the presentations the LinkedIn CDN team did at the last JavaOne. The post is titled LinkedIn Is Written in 99% Java, so to complete the picture I responded to the community with a message about how LinkedIn is 99% Java but 100% Mac.
The rest of the programming languages we use are C++, Ruby on Rails and Groovy/Grails. We have one team that uses Ruby on Rails top to bottom, another which heavily uses Grails, and of course XUL for the Firefox toolbar. While we enjoy using these great technologies, most of our core business logic is written in Java on a Spring/Jetty/Tomcat stack.
The 100% Mac is the development environment used by all the engineers (i.e. desktops and laptops). A new engineer that comes in gets a new MacPro with dual quad-core CPUs and 12GB of ram and a MacBook Pro. The down side of the whole deal is that you have to choose between two 23’’ or one 30’’ Apple Cinema display. Life is tough and you just can’t have it all. ;-)
If you would like to have such an epic working environment you still have a chance – we’re hiring.
trackback
http://blog.linkedin.com/2008/06/24/linkedin-is-99-java-but-100-mac/trackback/
Tommi Laukkanen June 24th, 2008
That is really impressive! I don’t know any employers here in Finland that would offer such high quality work environment. Most companies don’t understand that engineers put high value for large displays and powerful workstations (+laptops).
I’m sure you’ll make many offices look bad with those photos :) Keep’em coming as they are really nice to watch.
Asim June 24th, 2008
That setup is awesome. In our company the developers end up bringing in their own macbooks or installing ubuntu on the desktop machines they get given.
I’ve never seen anything so beautiful!
Eishay Smith June 24th, 2008
Thanks guys!
Most of the new engineers joining LinkedIn are new to Macs, but after a short while they all agree that the Macs are amazing software development machines. They are definitely not cheap, but if you’ll factor in the productivity boost then they are definitely a good investment.
By the way, I’m not the Apple fan boy type. I even don’t have an iPhone (well, not yet).
Cyndy Aleo-Carreira June 24th, 2008
Would you like to adopt me? I’d even go back to coding. Or maybe you’d rather adopt my husband?
Prentiss Riddle June 24th, 2008
Jacob Nielsen demonstrated years ago that for knowledge workers, large displays quickly pay for themselves on higher productivity. You’d think that more employers would have figured that out by now.
The interesting controversy your photos bring to light is about monitor height. I’d seen ergonomics charts which recommended raising monitors but my eye doctor finally convinced me that it’s easier to look down than up (even before you hit bifocal age). I now try to keep my monitors down near my keyboard.
Ikai Lan June 24th, 2008
@Prentiss Riddle -
I got my 30″ LCD last week and I’m definitely feeling the strain in my neck – but that’s only because our adjustable arms for 30″ monitors aren’t in yet!
Fred June 25th, 2008
Always amazed by the usage of HP Paper blocks :)
Looking around old books are more useful for screen elevation: Delphi 6, IBM WebSphere 5.0, …
Don Strawsburg June 25th, 2008
Wow, What a concept, give engineers the hardware and freedom they need to be creative.
Not to point fingers but, most of my employers do not allow personal hardware, nor provide usable hardware, lets see, a 14.1 inch 1 Gig Pentium Dell Laptop, with 512Meg of ram, and a 20 gig HD. Running Windows XP Pro, with Outlook e-mail, Doing Domino development, with all server side code in Java, so I needed Eclipse too.
I was allowed to provide my own full size keyboard and mouse, but was told NO to a 17 inch LCD. Well it did fit nicely into my 30 by 20 inch mini cube.
It’s nice to see that LinkedIn management understands how to provide a engineer with the tools and freedom they need to be successful.
Bravo LinkedIn.
E June 25th, 2008
Nice HP monitor stand. :)
Kevin June 25th, 2008
Awesome setup! As a long time Java developer (on Windows machines), I find myself curious now. Why are the Macs more productive for programmers?
Eishay June 25th, 2008
@Kevin – Good question I guess the answer has to do with quality. Quality of a tool, or even worse – a full environment, is hard to compare and is a subject to personal taste. You can take two sets of products with the same empiric parameters / features, and have one of them with a much higher perceived quality.
Arguably, the popular operating systems don’t have a significant edge in features one has and the other doesn’t. The answer is then in the small details, which eventually do matter. I can’t put my finger on why I think Mac is better (maybe quicksilver, iTerm, slick integration between applications, FreeBSD core…), but I believe that eventually it is.
Like with other products, the best way to know which is better is to survey few people who tried more then one product for a significant amount to time to compare them. I want through the Windows, Ubuntu and Mac, used each for several years. I would argue that most the people with similar experience would have similar conclusions.
Drew June 26th, 2008
Nice setup! No question about the monitors though: 2 x 23″ gives you 4.5M pixels. A single 30″ is only 4M pixels – 11% less. :-)
That said, the 30″ is something to write home about…
Arthur Guy June 26th, 2008
Out of interest what development tools do people use with the Mac?
Eishay Smith June 26th, 2008
@Arthur
Anyone may use his/her favorite tool. As for me, I use Eclipse (just installed Ganymede) for the IDE. There are few developers who use IntelliJ IDEA, it philosophy and for some environment it has a better support (Groovy for example). Still, I like Eclipse better.
I know that out web developers like TextMate, we use SubEthaEdit a lot for collaborations and my favorite free text editor is TextWrangler, which I think is the best (nothing like that for windows).
For DB stuff we like to use Aqua Data Studio, which is very good. My favorite terminal application is iTerm.
I probably missed lots of other tools I use, many of them you can find only on the Mac and I don’t miss anything from other operating systems.
The last two tools I’ll mention are QuickSilver and PTHPasteboard. These are not development tools, but I use them all the time and are great productivity tools.
Source Inspector June 26th, 2008
Wow, that’s a nice gift to get on the first day.
At my job, we certainly get the hardware we need and we could bring our own monitors and all that, but we’ve already got ones (I’ve no idea about dimension though.)
Oh and we also use Macs. They _are_ the better development tool, I’m not a fanboy either, and I used to be a GNU/Linux user, but now that I can run ‘ls’ and still have proper accelerated graphics, proper hibernation, proper mail client, and proper looks; I’m happier than ever.
MikeInAZ June 26th, 2008
Wow. Great post. I’m drooling.
What’s the brand of lcd arms used? They look cool and very adjustable.
Mahesh June 26th, 2008
Wow great to hear. And I really loved the inside company view. Dam interesting to watch :)
Mike J June 27th, 2008
Is using a Mac actually a condition of employment?
Eishay June 27th, 2008
@Mike
No, you may ask for something else though I don’t know of any engineer in his right mind how did that. There are product managers in LinkedIn who use Windows in order to have the same experience as our Windows users have.
Caspar July 2nd, 2008
If Linkedin is so much Mac, how come the Linkedin toolbar exist only for Outlook, and not for Entourage, or what e-mail software do you use at Linkedin?
Grzegorz July 3rd, 2008
That’s pretty impressive Eishay,
especially for development guys :)
Anyway, I created account 6 days ago and I’m not able to receive recommendations. I even create 2 new test profiles and got the same bug, can do recommendations, can’t receive.
I sent you guys the question about it ref 080702-000207 3 days ago, still without respond, so I decided to ask here due the fact it looks like major bug.
What is your position on it ?
Thanks
Birendra Agarwal August 28th, 2008
Hi – Much like one of the prvious posts…i would love to see the linkedin toolbar for entourage. Just switched to a macpro and really miss the “grab” feature in the outlook toolbar.
Mahesh October 5th, 2008
Hi – What OS do you guys run in production? I am a believer that development environment should mostly be same as your production env. That helps when debugging prod issues sometimes. Do you guys run into issues like that at all?
Betina Macho January 9th, 2009
Yes PLEASE – I miss the Outlook Toolbar so much and would LOVE to see it in my MacMail – this is a service I would be willing to pay for! The Grab function was heaven!
Thanks, Betina
shawn sanderson February 16th, 2009
I agree Linkedin for Entourage is definitely something that would be nice to have. Switching from windows, I definitely miss this.
Bill Freely May 2nd, 2009
Seriously, guys….this is insane. build the toolbar for Entourage – half of SF uses this, you have how many engineers? my team of two engineers could build this in a week or two – get with the market!
Dirk Frey May 8th, 2009
@Bill – Thanks for you feedback I have forwarded this request on to our product team for consideration in future releases.