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They employ a bunch of coders who are really good at solving textbook CS problems and whiteboarding medium/hard leetcode style questions but lack the experience
by sidlls 8y ago
They employ a bunch of coders who are really good at solving textbook CS problems and whiteboarding medium/hard leetcode style questions but lack the experience, interest, and in some cases ability to stretch beyond that into, say, proper systems or application development. There are far too many of these individuals who are able to "contribute" to the application code base more or less without the supervision of properly experienced and qualified engineers (there was some article, I think on Reddit, about how the app used to have thousands or tens of thousands of classes, re-wrote large bits of iOS core libraries, etc.).
- pvg 8y agoThis seems like an implausibly detailed level of knowledge of Facebook's workforce, especially if derived from something you maybe saw on Reddit that was about something else.
- plicense 8y agoI think this is a totally baseless comment. 1. Have you worked at Facebook as an engineer before? Do you first hand know that most engineers working on FB iOS app lack the experience and interest? 2. Have you reverse engineered the FB app and verified that the app lacks signs of proper system or application development? There could be a good enough reason as to why the app re-wrote core iOS libraries - most popularly performance and missing features. Also, tens of thousands of classes don't directly translate to increased binary size - its usually the dependencies of the code that results in such large binary sizes. Overall, if Facebook wanted to optimize its app size to be less than 491MB, they would have. Maybe its on their roadmap, maybe they decided most of their userbase have the ability to download 491MB and it isn't impacting the growth funnel, heck maybe some of the engineers actually wanted to work on optimizing the app size but it was shot down by management. Slamming engineers who work at Facebook and calling them inexperienced is just mean.
- saagarjha 8y ago> Have you reverse engineered the FB app and verified that the app lacks signs of proper system or application development? Have you? The size of the core Facebook application binaries disagree with your statement of “tens of thousands of classes don't directly translate to increased binary size - its usually the dependencies of the code that results in such large binary sizes”.
- plicense 8y agoI've not reverse engineered the FB app. I also don't think I'm legally allowed to. I'm simply "speculating" that a large number of reimplemented classes might not be the reason for the increased binary size from anecdotal experience of building similar app binaries for iOS. FWIW, I think this comment gives a pretty good reason for why the binary size is large - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996161
- HenryBemis 8y agoIt is contractually you aren't supposed to, due to terms & conditions. Legally, if you are in the USA (or some other country surrounded by water) get on a boat, take it 5-10 miles out, and start (also when on a flight over an ocean would give you some coverage). The comment you referred to (thank you) makes perfect sense.
- pvg 8y agoI bet the overwhelming bulk of reversing work done on everything, including iOS app is not done on planes or boats. Quite a bit of it is done in the US, to boot.
- saagarjha 8y ago> It is contractually you aren't supposed to, due to terms & conditions. I have never signed a contract with Facebook. Does that mean I’m free to reverse engineer it?
- manquer 8y agoI guess he means the T&C you agree to when downloading the app from apple and fb
- danmg 8y agoWho cares what you're 'legally allowed' to do on your own computer. I thought this was 'hacker' news not 'let us study the click through EULA and respect the terms and conditions entirely' news. If you can't or won't reverse engineer a binary file, you're a share cropper not a computer owner.
- askafriend 8y agoThis is an awful take and doesn't reflect the truth in any way whatsoever. The real answer is that Facebook does A LOT. Especially the main app. Facebook also serves A LOT of different audiences in a lot of different regions. Just consider that there is an entire YouTube worth of functionality inside of the main Facebook app. And that's just one vector of functionality that they offer.
- danmg 8y agoThis is the truth. They're predominately right out of school and don't understand systems engineering. If single schizophrenic man can create a complete 64-bit real-time multitasking operating system that can be distributed completely in a 2MB distribution, one of the highest valued tech companies in the world can make a glorified version of their website fit in under 20MB. Think how many lifetimes are wasted each day waiting for Facebook to load or update. I just uninstalled it about a year ago because I was so disgusted with it. Now, I get ads begging me to come back.