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Also their codebases are beyond incompatible. Facebook uses Hack, a PHP derivative while Whatsapp is Erlang. You'd need to completely rewrite the latter to inte

by chx 8y ago

Also their codebases are beyond incompatible. Facebook uses Hack, a PHP derivative while Whatsapp is Erlang. You'd need to completely rewrite the latter to integrate it but you'd lose the incredible efficiency of Whatsapp doing so.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Are you sure about that? Is Hack / PHP powerful enough to handle billions of messages an hour? If so, i'm impressed. But I doubt it and I'm sure you're wrong about what runs Messenger. No company, least of all the Facebook scale ones use just one language for everything.
- dpark 8y ago
  Of course the backing service is not PHP. That would be a particularly poor choice for a high volume messaging statement. They originally wrote it in Erlang and later rewrote it in C++. https://www.quora.com/When-did-Facebook-switch-away-from-using-Erlang-for-Facebook-Chat-What-was-the-reason-for-it-What-did-they-replace-it-with https://www.quora.com/When-did-Facebook-switch-away-from-usi...
  - dpark 8y ago
    statement -> service sigh
alistairSH 8y ago
Why do the codebases need to share a similar set of languages and tools? Integrating two services doesn't necessarily mean merging them into a single product; Facebook could likely allow the two to communicate without a complete product merger.