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It's interesting to note that this presentation strongly contradicts the advice of "The Pragmatic Programmer" and "Clean Code", which are highly respected by ma

It's interesting to note that this presentation strongly contradicts the advice of "The Pragmatic Programmer" and "Clean Code", which are highly respected by many. Does this mean that those books are wrong, or does it mean that Facebook will eventually come to regret their philosophy? Or maybe writing this kind of code is somehow fundamentally different, so the usual wisdom and rules of thumb don't apply. I really don't know the answer, but find it fascinating and can't wait to see what Facebook is doing in 10 years time.

alexpersian 11y ago
I think what it means is that as it stands now, there is no definite good/bad way to make successful software. There are just opinions.
- buffoon 11y ago
  There are definite bad ways. I've watched a few companies go down the shitter using known bad ways.
  - Shish2k 11y ago
    I've watched a few companies go down the shitter using known good ways; and seen companies with mind-blowingly horrific software succeed based on marketing and contracts. There are a lot of anecdotes, but I have yet to see any data suggesting a correlation.
- icefox 11y ago
  It also depends on your definition of successful. To be successful does software need to (check off what you think would matter): * Make money directly * Make money in-directly * Be used by at least 1 user (not including dev + dev friends and family) * Be alive and working in 6 months * Be alive and working in 2 years * Be alive and working in 10 years * Simply ship so dev gets a positive yearly review * Be bug free * Only crash N% of the time (who cares just re-run it and don't do the bad thing) * Quality / features don't matter as long as marketing is talking about it and people play with it so it looks successful. * Simply exist, but be subsidized by some one or something so devs keep hacking on it even if no one uses it. * Still be useful when there are zero devs working on it.
thrusong 11y ago
They probably have a while to go before they hit the ceiling, if Google's news last week about holding over 2 billion lines of code in one repository means anything. SRC: http://www.wired.com/2015/09/google-2-billion-lines-codeand-one-place/ http://www.wired.com/2015/09/google-2-billion-lines-codeand-...

alexpersian 11y ago

I think what it means is that as it stands now, there is no definite good/bad way to make successful software. There are just opinions.

buffoon 11y ago
There are definite bad ways. I've watched a few companies go down the shitter using known bad ways.
- Shish2k 11y ago
  I've watched a few companies go down the shitter using known good ways; and seen companies with mind-blowingly horrific software succeed based on marketing and contracts. There are a lot of anecdotes, but I have yet to see any data suggesting a correlation.
icefox 11y ago
It also depends on your definition of successful. To be successful does software need to (check off what you think would matter): * Make money directly * Make money in-directly * Be used by at least 1 user (not including dev + dev friends and family) * Be alive and working in 6 months * Be alive and working in 2 years * Be alive and working in 10 years * Simply ship so dev gets a positive yearly review * Be bug free * Only crash N% of the time (who cares just re-run it and don't do the bad thing) * Quality / features don't matter as long as marketing is talking about it and people play with it so it looks successful. * Simply exist, but be subsidized by some one or something so devs keep hacking on it even if no one uses it. * Still be useful when there are zero devs working on it.

thrusong 11y ago

They probably have a while to go before they hit the ceiling, if Google's news last week about holding over 2 billion lines of code in one repository means anything. SRC: http://www.wired.com/2015/09/google-2-billion-lines-codeand-one-place/ http://www.wired.com/2015/09/google-2-billion-lines-codeand-...