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Dynamically typed languages for large code bases are terrible The success of Wikipedia, Wordpress, Facebook, Youtube, GitHub etc etc etc and last but not l

by TekMol 9y ago

Dynamically typed languages for large code bases are terrible The success of Wikipedia, Wordpress, Facebook, Youtube, GitHub etc etc etc and last but not least Reddit seem to prove otherwise.

minitech 9y ago
> seem to prove otherwise Prove how? They could have succeeded in spite of dynamic typing, not because of it. Facebook defined a new programming language to add static typing to HHVM. The process of plugging into WordPress is infamous in its disorganization. There’s a lack of good statically-typed languages, so it’s natural for many popular things to be built in dynamically-typed ones, but that doesn’t make the dynamic typing approach better.
- TekMol 9y ago
  Prove how? By means of natural selection. They could have succeeded in spite of dynamic typing, not because of it. You think the otherwise smart and successfull founders of these projects all made the wrong choice when it came to selecting the right tool for the job? Facebook defined a new programming language No, they wrote a faster runtime. to add static typing to HHVM No, they added type annotations. There’s a lack of good statically-typed languages No, in the past statically typed languages were the norm. C, C++, Java... It's just that dynamic languages outcompeted them.
  - minitech 9y ago
    > You think the otherwise smart and successful founders of these projects all made the wrong choice when it came to selecting the right tool for the job? Not at all! I think dynamic typing hurts code, but there are: - not always alternatives - many other slightly suboptimal choices that it’s quite possible to succeed in spite of > No, they wrote a faster runtime. I’m referring to Hack, which is in fact another language with static typing. (Type annotations are static typing with compromises, and you can see what’s being gone for.) > No, in the past statically typed languages were the norm. C, C++, Java... Those are not remotely good. Some examples closer to being good are Rust, a step in the right direction that’s still unfolding, and Haskell, a wonderful language hampered by a slow compiler and a lack of decent packages. (And probably several less popular languages, but popularity is an important factor…)
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      "Those are not remotely good. Some examples closer to being good are Rust, a step in the right direction that’s still unfolding, and Haskell, a wonderful language hampered by a slow compiler and a lack of decent packages. (And probably several less popular languages, but popularity is an important factor…)" Wait: so you are arguing that startups should use languages that are either incomplete (Rust) or that have slow compilers and poor library support (Haskell), or possibly some other "good" language that doesn't actually even exist?
      - minitech 9y ago
        I’m saying that dynamically-typed programming languages are the best choice right now, but that it’s not because they’re dynamically-typed; existing fare for statically-typed languages is just worse. Probably should have clarified that earlier since it looks like I agree with the statement that choosing Python was “a mistake”; sorry. I don’t. Vehemently.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    If type annotations support a static verifier, they implement static typing (which, after all, is just having a static verifier that uses some combination of annotations and inference to validate types.)
  - dom0 9y ago
    > It's just that dynamic languages outcompeted them. All "trending" languages are statically typed (Rust, Go, Swift, Kotlin, ...) and all the popular JavaScrip-improved-languages are statically typed as well. Even further, many dynamically typed languages have pushed in recent years to add type annotations or even static typing (e.g. mypy). Dynamic typing is the brainchild of the 90s for rapid initial development. Sustainability has been a big issue from the outset.
    - kazinator 9y ago
      Dynamic typing is from 1958 Lisp. Your history is off a bit there, by some forty years.
      - dom0 9y ago
        Lisp has nothing to do (in many ways) with the late 80s and 90s wave of dynamic languages.
        spot 9y ago
        JavaScript was definitely partly inspired by Scheme.
        zem 9y ago
        likewise ruby by lisp
        Gaelan 9y ago
        I’d say Ruby’s closest sibling is Smalltalk personally.
        kazinator 9y ago
        People say this mainly because of the brace-enclosed blocks of code being functions. However, that is really just a syntactic sugar for lambda (and can even have explicit arguments: (lambda (x y) ...) <--> {|x,y| ... }.
  - nine_k 9y ago
    Smart answer successful founders of Wikipedia took an existing wiki engine. Their aspirations were not in the software development area. Highly dynamic languages like Python or PHP or Perl are easy to start with, so they're great for prototypes. Then either a serious rewrite follows, using a statically checked language, or scaffolding is erected to continue to make do with the dynamic code. Microservices help!
    - bayesian_horse 9y ago
      Erm, so splitting big Python projects into microservices is proof that dynamic typing is unsustainable?
      - nine_k 9y ago
        No; but a single microservice is a smaller code base that a large monolith, so the problem . Also, you normally control the microservice's interface more strictly, and change it less often, and care about compatibility and versioning more, than for a typical internal API.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - nv-vn 9y ago
    >You think the otherwise smart and successfull founders of these projects all made the wrong choice when it came to selecting the right tool for the job? Nobody is perfect. Mark Zuckerberg has had his fair share of controversies for example. >No, in the past statically typed languages were the norm. C, C++, Java... Not good examples for your argument. These are largely considered poorly statically typed. Compare to ML, Haskell, Ada, Rust, Swift for reference.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
    > No, they wrote a faster runtime. Which includes a statically-typed version of PHP, namely Hack, that they use for their code. > No, they added type annotations. Hack's type checking is much more sophisticated than mere “annotations”. That label might be better suited to PHP's type system.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >Prove how? They could have succeeded in spite of dynamic typing, not because of it. Then maybe the burden of proof is on you? If you started your career recently, it's easy to be caught up into this "static typing" as some kind of the only way.
  - andreasgonewild 9y ago
    And until you have gone back and forth a couple of times, building moderately complex systems; it's difficult to appreciate the advantages that static checking bring to the table. Sure, it's possible to achieve the same effect with unit tests; but having half of those tests written and rewritten for you by the compiler definitely helps. Back in the days, I wanted to buy into the Python/Ruby hype as much as anyone; but having implemented several complex systems in Python/Ruby, I'm not that excited about the idea anymore; once they pass a certain point, agile begins to feel more like Jello.
  - minitech 9y ago
    > Then maybe the burden of proof is on you? I’m saying that the parent doesn’t prove its point, and I’m not attempting to prove its parent’s point. > If you started your career recently, it's easy to be caught up into this "static typing" as some kind of the only way. I didn’t, and the bulk of what I’ve built has been in languages with dynamic typing. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14675577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14675577. Dismissing stuff as “recent starts” is pretty cheap, anyway.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  "They could have succeeded in spite of dynamic typing, not because of it." Yes, they could have. Evidence for your hypothesis would be the existence of similarly successful companies that used compiled statically-typed languages from the beginning. Are there any recent ones?
  - tome 9y ago
    Are you suggesting that there are no similarly successful companies that used Java, C# or C++?
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      Are you suggesting there are? I asked for examples. Can you provide one?
- kchoudhu 9y ago
  I'm going to throw this idea out there: companies can succeed independent of type checking.
  - rdtsc 9y ago
    That's really going out on the limb though... But you're right. Moreover I noticed obsession with a particular language is often a hallmark of a junior engineer or a recent grad. This this idea of "If you don't use Go/Node.js/etc you'll totally fail".
    - kchoudhu 9y ago
      HN skews young, I'm sure they'll grow out of it.
  - minitech 9y ago
    > Dynamically typed languages for large code bases are terrible was the original argument. Success/failure of entire companies has somehow been brought into it.
- PunchTornado 9y ago
  The same can be said about any company to justify your opinions, like Linkedin, they use Java and Scala and their page speed is so slow. Compared to Facebook they are like a 1900' tractor. A facebook page opens in less than a second, a Linkedin page in 5.
  - mudbutt 9y ago
    I think it's the fact LinkedIn uses Ember. Anything built with Ember is sluggish and bloated
maxxxxx 9y ago
I bet a lot of their business logic is written in Java or C++. As far as I know Facebook has a lot of C++ and Youtube's video handling is probably also not written in Javascript.
threeseed 9y ago
That's not proof though. You can have a successful website with a terrible code base and vice versa. The quality of your code base largely affects the ability to roll out new features with limited regressions.
tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago
They all started with dynamically typed languages because that was what the founders knew best when they started working on their project. Yes, you can build successful projects with dynamically typed languages but it is a pain to refactor when you grow. You even introduce a class of bugs doesn’t exist for statically typed languages. You don’t see them redo everything only because the cost would be to big. Some developed their custom tooling to handle the language they are stuck with, see Facebook.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > You even introduce a class of bugs doesn’t exist for statically typed languages. As type systems vary, almost every statically-typed language allows some errors of the class statically-typed languages, in general, can prevent, so this is not really true. What is true is that on the continuum from no static validation to something like Idris or Agda, you accept more statically-avoidable type errors the closer you are to the former rather than the latter.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  A rudimentary end2end test should catch most type related bugs. A type system aids in refactoring, not so much actually catching bugs.
  - raquo 9y ago
    Static types are better and cheaper at catching type related bugs than a myriad of end-to-end tests that check dynamic types.
  - dom0 9y ago
    Type systems can enforce so much more, depending on the language. They make reasoning about the code far easier for both human and machine. They enable efficient optimization. They allow far superior static analysis. They allow superior IDE assistance. They improve code navigability (ag/grep). There are countless advantages to static typing, and most of the disadvantages simply don't exist in modern languages any more. Meanwhile, dynamic languages haven't evolved significantly, except to add type annotations, which are like types, just almost always less powerful and not enforced by default. Dynamic languages excel at fast initial development and "gimmicky" code (wildfire monkey patching, introspection, dynamic code generation etc.), and to get there you pay dearly. Practically all other properties suffer; stability, maintainability, performance, memory usage, ease of deployment, distribution and so on and so forth. That doesn't mean that dynamic languages have no place, or applications developed using them are somehow generally inferior to those written in statically typed languages; choice of language is only one mosaic stone of many. But it is also a foundation stone, and dictates many constraints, both technical, and social.
staticassertion 9y ago
Can you source some of these? Genuinely curious.
- minitech 9y ago
  You mean sources for languages used in the implementation of various websites? - Wikipedia is mostly PHP https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki - Wordpress is PHP https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress - Facebook started in PHP https://www.quora.com/What-programming-languages-are-used-at-Facebook https://www.quora.com/What-programming-languages-are-used-at... - YouTube started in Python https://www.quora.com/Is-YouTube-still-written-in-Python https://www.quora.com/Is-YouTube-still-written-in-Python - GitHub is Ruby https://github.com/showcases/projects-that-power-github https://github.com/showcases/projects-that-power-github - Reddit is mostly Python https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_what_is_reddit_written_in.3F https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_what_is_reddit_written_...
  - staticassertion 9y ago
    Yes, exactly. Thanks very much. Do you know if Facebook/ Youtube are still in PHP / Python?
    - noir_lord 9y ago
      Facebook still uses PHP for a lot of templating/page generation, they use a bunch of stuff on the back not least HHVM which was great because it forced/focused the PHP team in a bunch of areas, php7 is a huge I improvement over 5 on just about every metric. It's not amazing as a language still but it's much much better and the ecosystem has really improved, modern PHP leveraging good composer components is pretty good. Even some good static analysis tooling these days.
  - icey 9y ago
    GitHub is _mostly_ Ruby -- there's Go, Python, C, and I think some Haskell in production on the website (there used to be some Erlang in there too, but iirc that's gone now). The Visual Studio and Unity extensions are written in C#. The new GitHub Desktop is written entirely in Typescript.
make3 9y ago
instagram, dropbox, etc
- minitech 9y ago
  It might say something that the creator of Python is working at Dropbox and currently on a project to add static typing to it… (https://github.com/python/mypy/commits/master https://github.com/python/mypy/commits/master because I know the pain of linkless comments)
dom0 9y ago
Most of these languages are pretty terrible to run at scale. Also, all of the examples you cite a rather the "in spite of" kind. Wikipedia? Struggles to maintain the code base, lest to speak of significant new development. Wordpress? Afterwit of web security. Facebook? Facebook literally developed a new PHP implementation (edit: actually, two) and then turned that into a separate language (which is statically typed) because that's easier than to clean up their PHP code base. YouTube? Maybe some help pages are still on Python. The application most likely isn't at all. GitHub? Goes down every few days with 500s after buggy code was deployed.
- 0xADEADBEE 9y ago
  The majority of YouTube is in Python 2.7 and actually served as the impetus for GrumPy [1], a transpiler to convert Python to Go. [1] https://github.com/google/grumpy/ https://github.com/google/grumpy/
specialist 9y ago
Even pigs fly, given enough thrust.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
blitmap 9y ago
I am a HUGE coffeescript fan. What I liked about flow was seemingly unobtrusive typing/type hinting. I am not a fan of type-strict languages because I spend more time thinking about types and contracts around them than milestones/design goals. Anyway, to each their own. I want "Unobtrusive Typing" to be a thing.
- Joeri 9y ago
  Plain Javascript is valid typescript. You can add types where you need them, via type declarations or jsdoc comments. Typescript is easy to use in a partial way, the type system only gets complicated if you turn on all the strictness settings and have to explicitly annotate every type, even in dynamic code.
marksomnian 9y ago
Eevee's Law: Facebook and Wikipedia could have been written in Brainfuck, as long as they can find enough smart people to mangle it. The fact that a major site is written in a language doesn't say anything about the quality of the language.
h1d 9y ago
You are mixing the financial and technical successes... Look at the mess of wordpress code. It's an abomaly and security history proves how it was never a technical success.

by TekMol 9y ago

Dynamically typed languages for large code bases are terrible The success of Wikipedia, Wordpress, Facebook, Youtube, GitHub etc etc etc and last but not least Reddit seem to prove otherwise.

minitech 9y ago

> seem to prove otherwise Prove how? They could have succeeded in spite of dynamic typing, not because of it. Facebook defined a new programming language to add static typing to HHVM. The process of plugging into WordPress is infamous in its disorganization. There’s a lack of good statically-typed languages, so it’s natural for many popular things to be built in dynamically-typed ones, but that doesn’t make the dynamic typing approach better.

TekMol 9y ago
Prove how? By means of natural selection. They could have succeeded in spite of dynamic typing, not because of it. You think the otherwise smart and successfull founders of these projects all made the wrong choice when it came to selecting the right tool for the job? Facebook defined a new programming language No, they wrote a faster runtime. to add static typing to HHVM No, they added type annotations. There’s a lack of good statically-typed languages No, in the past statically typed languages were the norm. C, C++, Java... It's just that dynamic languages outcompeted them.
- minitech 9y ago
  > You think the otherwise smart and successful founders of these projects all made the wrong choice when it came to selecting the right tool for the job? Not at all! I think dynamic typing hurts code, but there are: - not always alternatives - many other slightly suboptimal choices that it’s quite possible to succeed in spite of > No, they wrote a faster runtime. I’m referring to Hack, which is in fact another language with static typing. (Type annotations are static typing with compromises, and you can see what’s being gone for.) > No, in the past statically typed languages were the norm. C, C++, Java... Those are not remotely good. Some examples closer to being good are Rust, a step in the right direction that’s still unfolding, and Haskell, a wonderful language hampered by a slow compiler and a lack of decent packages. (And probably several less popular languages, but popularity is an important factor…)
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    "Those are not remotely good. Some examples closer to being good are Rust, a step in the right direction that’s still unfolding, and Haskell, a wonderful language hampered by a slow compiler and a lack of decent packages. (And probably several less popular languages, but popularity is an important factor…)" Wait: so you are arguing that startups should use languages that are either incomplete (Rust) or that have slow compilers and poor library support (Haskell), or possibly some other "good" language that doesn't actually even exist?
    - minitech 9y ago
      I’m saying that dynamically-typed programming languages are the best choice right now, but that it’s not because they’re dynamically-typed; existing fare for statically-typed languages is just worse. Probably should have clarified that earlier since it looks like I agree with the statement that choosing Python was “a mistake”; sorry. I don’t. Vehemently.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  If type annotations support a static verifier, they implement static typing (which, after all, is just having a static verifier that uses some combination of annotations and inference to validate types.)
- dom0 9y ago
  > It's just that dynamic languages outcompeted them. All "trending" languages are statically typed (Rust, Go, Swift, Kotlin, ...) and all the popular JavaScrip-improved-languages are statically typed as well. Even further, many dynamically typed languages have pushed in recent years to add type annotations or even static typing (e.g. mypy). Dynamic typing is the brainchild of the 90s for rapid initial development. Sustainability has been a big issue from the outset.
  - kazinator 9y ago
    Dynamic typing is from 1958 Lisp. Your history is off a bit there, by some forty years.
    - dom0 9y ago
      Lisp has nothing to do (in many ways) with the late 80s and 90s wave of dynamic languages.
      - spot 9y ago
        JavaScript was definitely partly inspired by Scheme.
        zem 9y ago
        likewise ruby by lisp
        Gaelan 9y ago
        I’d say Ruby’s closest sibling is Smalltalk personally.
        kazinator 9y ago
        People say this mainly because of the brace-enclosed blocks of code being functions. However, that is really just a syntactic sugar for lambda (and can even have explicit arguments: (lambda (x y) ...) <--> {|x,y| ... }.
- nine_k 9y ago
  Smart answer successful founders of Wikipedia took an existing wiki engine. Their aspirations were not in the software development area. Highly dynamic languages like Python or PHP or Perl are easy to start with, so they're great for prototypes. Then either a serious rewrite follows, using a statically checked language, or scaffolding is erected to continue to make do with the dynamic code. Microservices help!
  - bayesian_horse 9y ago
    Erm, so splitting big Python projects into microservices is proof that dynamic typing is unsustainable?
    - nine_k 9y ago
      No; but a single microservice is a smaller code base that a large monolith, so the problem . Also, you normally control the microservice's interface more strictly, and change it less often, and care about compatibility and versioning more, than for a typical internal API.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- nv-vn 9y ago
  >You think the otherwise smart and successfull founders of these projects all made the wrong choice when it came to selecting the right tool for the job? Nobody is perfect. Mark Zuckerberg has had his fair share of controversies for example. >No, in the past statically typed languages were the norm. C, C++, Java... Not good examples for your argument. These are largely considered poorly statically typed. Compare to ML, Haskell, Ada, Rust, Swift for reference.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  > No, they wrote a faster runtime. Which includes a statically-typed version of PHP, namely Hack, that they use for their code. > No, they added type annotations. Hack's type checking is much more sophisticated than mere “annotations”. That label might be better suited to PHP's type system.
coldtea 9y ago
>Prove how? They could have succeeded in spite of dynamic typing, not because of it. Then maybe the burden of proof is on you? If you started your career recently, it's easy to be caught up into this "static typing" as some kind of the only way.
- andreasgonewild 9y ago
  And until you have gone back and forth a couple of times, building moderately complex systems; it's difficult to appreciate the advantages that static checking bring to the table. Sure, it's possible to achieve the same effect with unit tests; but having half of those tests written and rewritten for you by the compiler definitely helps. Back in the days, I wanted to buy into the Python/Ruby hype as much as anyone; but having implemented several complex systems in Python/Ruby, I'm not that excited about the idea anymore; once they pass a certain point, agile begins to feel more like Jello.
- minitech 9y ago
  > Then maybe the burden of proof is on you? I’m saying that the parent doesn’t prove its point, and I’m not attempting to prove its parent’s point. > If you started your career recently, it's easy to be caught up into this "static typing" as some kind of the only way. I didn’t, and the bulk of what I’ve built has been in languages with dynamic typing. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14675577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14675577. Dismissing stuff as “recent starts” is pretty cheap, anyway.
Turing_Machine 9y ago
"They could have succeeded in spite of dynamic typing, not because of it." Yes, they could have. Evidence for your hypothesis would be the existence of similarly successful companies that used compiled statically-typed languages from the beginning. Are there any recent ones?
- tome 9y ago
  Are you suggesting that there are no similarly successful companies that used Java, C# or C++?
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    Are you suggesting there are? I asked for examples. Can you provide one?
kchoudhu 9y ago
I'm going to throw this idea out there: companies can succeed independent of type checking.
- rdtsc 9y ago
  That's really going out on the limb though... But you're right. Moreover I noticed obsession with a particular language is often a hallmark of a junior engineer or a recent grad. This this idea of "If you don't use Go/Node.js/etc you'll totally fail".
  - kchoudhu 9y ago
    HN skews young, I'm sure they'll grow out of it.
- minitech 9y ago
  > Dynamically typed languages for large code bases are terrible was the original argument. Success/failure of entire companies has somehow been brought into it.
PunchTornado 9y ago
The same can be said about any company to justify your opinions, like Linkedin, they use Java and Scala and their page speed is so slow. Compared to Facebook they are like a 1900' tractor. A facebook page opens in less than a second, a Linkedin page in 5.
- mudbutt 9y ago
  I think it's the fact LinkedIn uses Ember. Anything built with Ember is sluggish and bloated

maxxxxx 9y ago

I bet a lot of their business logic is written in Java or C++. As far as I know Facebook has a lot of C++ and Youtube's video handling is probably also not written in Javascript.

threeseed 9y ago

That's not proof though. You can have a successful website with a terrible code base and vice versa. The quality of your code base largely affects the ability to roll out new features with limited regressions.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y ago

They all started with dynamically typed languages because that was what the founders knew best when they started working on their project. Yes, you can build successful projects with dynamically typed languages but it is a pain to refactor when you grow. You even introduce a class of bugs doesn’t exist for statically typed languages. You don’t see them redo everything only because the cost would be to big. Some developed their custom tooling to handle the language they are stuck with, see Facebook.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> You even introduce a class of bugs doesn’t exist for statically typed languages. As type systems vary, almost every statically-typed language allows some errors of the class statically-typed languages, in general, can prevent, so this is not really true. What is true is that on the continuum from no static validation to something like Idris or Agda, you accept more statically-avoidable type errors the closer you are to the former rather than the latter.
joshuamorton 9y ago
A rudimentary end2end test should catch most type related bugs. A type system aids in refactoring, not so much actually catching bugs.
- raquo 9y ago
  Static types are better and cheaper at catching type related bugs than a myriad of end-to-end tests that check dynamic types.
- dom0 9y ago
  Type systems can enforce so much more, depending on the language. They make reasoning about the code far easier for both human and machine. They enable efficient optimization. They allow far superior static analysis. They allow superior IDE assistance. They improve code navigability (ag/grep). There are countless advantages to static typing, and most of the disadvantages simply don't exist in modern languages any more. Meanwhile, dynamic languages haven't evolved significantly, except to add type annotations, which are like types, just almost always less powerful and not enforced by default. Dynamic languages excel at fast initial development and "gimmicky" code (wildfire monkey patching, introspection, dynamic code generation etc.), and to get there you pay dearly. Practically all other properties suffer; stability, maintainability, performance, memory usage, ease of deployment, distribution and so on and so forth. That doesn't mean that dynamic languages have no place, or applications developed using them are somehow generally inferior to those written in statically typed languages; choice of language is only one mosaic stone of many. But it is also a foundation stone, and dictates many constraints, both technical, and social.

staticassertion 9y ago

Can you source some of these? Genuinely curious.

minitech 9y ago
You mean sources for languages used in the implementation of various websites? - Wikipedia is mostly PHP https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki - Wordpress is PHP https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress - Facebook started in PHP https://www.quora.com/What-programming-languages-are-used-at-Facebook https://www.quora.com/What-programming-languages-are-used-at... - YouTube started in Python https://www.quora.com/Is-YouTube-still-written-in-Python https://www.quora.com/Is-YouTube-still-written-in-Python - GitHub is Ruby https://github.com/showcases/projects-that-power-github https://github.com/showcases/projects-that-power-github - Reddit is mostly Python https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_what_is_reddit_written_in.3F https://www.reddit.com/wiki/faq#wiki_what_is_reddit_written_...
- staticassertion 9y ago
  Yes, exactly. Thanks very much. Do you know if Facebook/ Youtube are still in PHP / Python?
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    Facebook still uses PHP for a lot of templating/page generation, they use a bunch of stuff on the back not least HHVM which was great because it forced/focused the PHP team in a bunch of areas, php7 is a huge I improvement over 5 on just about every metric. It's not amazing as a language still but it's much much better and the ecosystem has really improved, modern PHP leveraging good composer components is pretty good. Even some good static analysis tooling these days.
- icey 9y ago
  GitHub is _mostly_ Ruby -- there's Go, Python, C, and I think some Haskell in production on the website (there used to be some Erlang in there too, but iirc that's gone now). The Visual Studio and Unity extensions are written in C#. The new GitHub Desktop is written entirely in Typescript.

make3 9y ago

instagram, dropbox, etc

minitech 9y ago
It might say something that the creator of Python is working at Dropbox and currently on a project to add static typing to it… (https://github.com/python/mypy/commits/master https://github.com/python/mypy/commits/master because I know the pain of linkless comments)

dom0 9y ago

Most of these languages are pretty terrible to run at scale. Also, all of the examples you cite a rather the "in spite of" kind. Wikipedia? Struggles to maintain the code base, lest to speak of significant new development. Wordpress? Afterwit of web security. Facebook? Facebook literally developed a new PHP implementation (edit: actually, two) and then turned that into a separate language (which is statically typed) because that's easier than to clean up their PHP code base. YouTube? Maybe some help pages are still on Python. The application most likely isn't at all. GitHub? Goes down every few days with 500s after buggy code was deployed.

0xADEADBEE 9y ago
The majority of YouTube is in Python 2.7 and actually served as the impetus for GrumPy [1], a transpiler to convert Python to Go. [1] https://github.com/google/grumpy/ https://github.com/google/grumpy/

specialist 9y ago

Even pigs fly, given enough thrust.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

blitmap 9y ago

I am a HUGE coffeescript fan. What I liked about flow was seemingly unobtrusive typing/type hinting. I am not a fan of type-strict languages because I spend more time thinking about types and contracts around them than milestones/design goals. Anyway, to each their own. I want "Unobtrusive Typing" to be a thing.

Joeri 9y ago
Plain Javascript is valid typescript. You can add types where you need them, via type declarations or jsdoc comments. Typescript is easy to use in a partial way, the type system only gets complicated if you turn on all the strictness settings and have to explicitly annotate every type, even in dynamic code.

marksomnian 9y ago

Eevee's Law: Facebook and Wikipedia could have been written in Brainfuck, as long as they can find enough smart people to mangle it. The fact that a major site is written in a language doesn't say anything about the quality of the language.

h1d 9y ago

You are mixing the financial and technical successes... Look at the mess of wordpress code. It's an abomaly and security history proves how it was never a technical success.