4 ms·

Somebody posted a breakdown of Facebook.app earlier this year. Looks like a lot of duplicated assets in there (too many developers / teams working on different

by 0x0 9y ago

Somebody posted a breakdown of Facebook.app earlier this year. Looks like a lot of duplicated assets in there (too many developers / teams working on different parts of the app?) http://blog.timac.org/?p=1707 http://blog.timac.org/?p=1707 HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14082491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14082491

melvinmt 9y ago
From what I understand the FB app is bloated because it's shipped with all experimental features that are toggled on/off with flags by all the teams that are working on the app. So yeah, that adds up.
- hengheng 9y ago
  And because nobody will uninstall the Facebook app because of that.
  - mintplant 9y ago
    I did. Too much space consumption plus notification spam got me to delete it from my device. I'd get rid of Messenger, too, if it weren't so central to my social life.
  - brianwawok 9y ago
    I did
Animats 9y ago
The dark side of version pinning - many slightly different copies of the same thing.
CrazyCatDog 9y ago
Facebook used to throttle devices once a week to make devs dogfood bandwidth in developing nations--I think it's much more top of mind there than we give them credit for.
- valuearb 9y ago
  I don't think Facebook forces them to download new versions that day. Because responsiveness is clearly more top of mind with them than download time/cost.
- kuschku 9y ago
  As a developer, I only use my app on 64kbps speeds. At those speeds, the only webpages still working are a few blogs and HN, and the only apps still working are whatsapp, some special irc apps optimized for that such as quasseldroid or irccloud, some reddit readers, and, if you have a lot of time, imgur. Most of these also have app sizes in the kilobytes to single digit megabytes, making downloading possible within of a few minutes on 64kbps (essentially dialup). Those speeds are basically guaranteed anywhere in the solar system, and if your app works with that, it basically works everywhere.

by 0x0 9y ago

melvinmt 9y ago

From what I understand the FB app is bloated because it's shipped with all experimental features that are toggled on/off with flags by all the teams that are working on the app. So yeah, that adds up.

hengheng 9y ago
And because nobody will uninstall the Facebook app because of that.
- mintplant 9y ago
  I did. Too much space consumption plus notification spam got me to delete it from my device. I'd get rid of Messenger, too, if it weren't so central to my social life.
- brianwawok 9y ago
  I did

Animats 9y ago

The dark side of version pinning - many slightly different copies of the same thing.

CrazyCatDog 9y ago

Facebook used to throttle devices once a week to make devs dogfood bandwidth in developing nations--I think it's much more top of mind there than we give them credit for.

valuearb 9y ago
I don't think Facebook forces them to download new versions that day. Because responsiveness is clearly more top of mind with them than download time/cost.
kuschku 9y ago
As a developer, I only use my app on 64kbps speeds. At those speeds, the only webpages still working are a few blogs and HN, and the only apps still working are whatsapp, some special irc apps optimized for that such as quasseldroid or irccloud, some reddit readers, and, if you have a lot of time, imgur. Most of these also have app sizes in the kilobytes to single digit megabytes, making downloading possible within of a few minutes on 64kbps (essentially dialup). Those speeds are basically guaranteed anywhere in the solar system, and if your app works with that, it basically works everywhere.