In graduate school, at M.I.T., Sanjay found a tight-knit group of friends. Still, he never dated, and does so only “very, very infrequently” now. He says that he didn’t decide not to have a family—it just unfolded that way. His close friends have learned not to bother him about it, and his parents long ago accepted that their son would be a bachelor. Perhaps because he’s so private, an air of mystery surrounds him at Google. He is known for being quiet but profound—someone who thinks deeply and with unusual clarity. On his desk, he keeps a stack of Mead composition notebooks going back nearly twenty years, filled with tidy lists and diagrams. He writes in pen and in cursive. He rarely references an old notebook, but writes in order to think. At M.I.T., his graduate adviser was Barbara Liskov, an influential computer scientist who studied, among other things, the management of complex code bases. In her view, the best code is like a good piece of writing. It needs a carefully realized structure; every word should do work. Programming this way requires empathy with readers. It also means seeing code not just as a means to an end but as an artifact in itself. “The thing I think he is best at is designing systems,” Craig Silverstein said. “If you’re just looking at a file of code Sanjay wrote, it’s beautiful in the way that a well-proportioned sculpture is beautiful.”
[---]
At Google, Jeff is far better known. There are Jeff Dean memes, modelled on the ones about Chuck Norris. (“Chuck Norris counted to infinity . . . twice”; “Jeff Dean’s résumé lists the things he hasn’t done—it’s shorter that way.”) But, for those who know them both, Sanjay is an equal talent. “Jeff is great at coming up with wild new ideas and prototyping things,” Wilson Hsieh, their longtime colleague, said. “Sanjay was the one who built things to last.” In life, Jeff is more outgoing, Sanjay more introverted. In code, it’s the reverse. Jeff’s programming is dazzling—he can quickly outline startling ideas—but, because it’s done quickly, in a spirit of discovery, it can leave readers behind. Sanjay’s code is social.
“Some people,” Silverstein said, “their code’s too loose. One screen of code has very little information on it. You’re always scrolling back and forth to figure out what’s going on.” Others write code that’s too dense: “You look at it, you’re, like, ‘Ugh. I’m not looking forward to reading this.’ Sanjay has somehow split the middle. You look at his code and you’re, like, ‘O.K., I can figure this out,’ and, still, you get a lot on a single page.” Silverstein continued, “Whenever I want to add new functionality to Sanjay’s code, it seems like the hooks are already there. I feel like Salieri. I understand the greatness. I don’t understand how it’s done.”
[---]
“Hey,” Jeff said. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the screen. Although in conversation he is given to dad jokes and puns, he can become opinionated, brusque, and disapproving when he sits at a computer with Sanjay. Sanjay takes this in stride. When he thinks Jeff is moving too fast, he’ll lift his hands off the keyboard and spread his fingers, as if to say, “Stop.” (In general, Jeff is the accelerator, Sanjay the brake.) This is as close as they get to an argument: in twenty years together, they can’t remember raising their voices.
- More Here
[---]
At Google, Jeff is far better known. There are Jeff Dean memes, modelled on the ones about Chuck Norris. (“Chuck Norris counted to infinity . . . twice”; “Jeff Dean’s résumé lists the things he hasn’t done—it’s shorter that way.”) But, for those who know them both, Sanjay is an equal talent. “Jeff is great at coming up with wild new ideas and prototyping things,” Wilson Hsieh, their longtime colleague, said. “Sanjay was the one who built things to last.” In life, Jeff is more outgoing, Sanjay more introverted. In code, it’s the reverse. Jeff’s programming is dazzling—he can quickly outline startling ideas—but, because it’s done quickly, in a spirit of discovery, it can leave readers behind. Sanjay’s code is social.
“Some people,” Silverstein said, “their code’s too loose. One screen of code has very little information on it. You’re always scrolling back and forth to figure out what’s going on.” Others write code that’s too dense: “You look at it, you’re, like, ‘Ugh. I’m not looking forward to reading this.’ Sanjay has somehow split the middle. You look at his code and you’re, like, ‘O.K., I can figure this out,’ and, still, you get a lot on a single page.” Silverstein continued, “Whenever I want to add new functionality to Sanjay’s code, it seems like the hooks are already there. I feel like Salieri. I understand the greatness. I don’t understand how it’s done.”
[---]
“Hey,” Jeff said. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the screen. Although in conversation he is given to dad jokes and puns, he can become opinionated, brusque, and disapproving when he sits at a computer with Sanjay. Sanjay takes this in stride. When he thinks Jeff is moving too fast, he’ll lift his hands off the keyboard and spread his fingers, as if to say, “Stop.” (In general, Jeff is the accelerator, Sanjay the brake.) This is as close as they get to an argument: in twenty years together, they can’t remember raising their voices.
- More Here
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