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> How is Facebook's iOS app 491MB? Simple - Feature Creep[1]. Facebook's iOS app shows no restraint when it comes to features. Take for example when you have t

> How is Facebook's iOS app 491MB? Simple - Feature Creep[1]. Facebook's iOS app shows no restraint when it comes to features. Take for example when you have the word 'congratulations' in your status, when you then click on the word after posting it we are shown a big elaborate animation. Something like that may be at least 10MB of code - just for a silly animation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep

twtw 8y ago
> Something like that may be at least 10MB of code - just for a silly animation. For reference, the Linux kernel can easily be made to fit in 10MB. I don't understand how it can possibly be code, it has to be assets.
- harrygeez 8y ago
  all those layers of abstraction where JS is translated into native calls should take up some considerable weight. I believe they use a variation of React Native to share code between their Android and iOS apps. Magic always comes with a price
captainmuon 8y ago
I still don't understand it. WeChat, the Chinese messaging app, is the definition of feature creep, and still "only" 290.1 MB. It not only includes messaging and social network functions, but banking, shopping, taxi hailing, dating, and tons of other features. It's been compared to an OS of its own, you don't live in iOS or Android, you live in WeChat. I think it is a combination of not caring - everybody working at FB has the newest phone and the fastest connections - and maybe not the best developers. Or maybe the developers are really top notch 10x developers that you would expect at a silicon valley megacorp, but they are incentivised wrong and have to push out new features as quickly as possible...
- jtokoph 8y ago
  As far as I can tell with my limited use of WeChat while in China, most of the extra features are created by third parties and are hosted as third party web apps inside of a web browser. I could be wrong though.

twtw 8y ago

> Something like that may be at least 10MB of code - just for a silly animation. For reference, the Linux kernel can easily be made to fit in 10MB. I don't understand how it can possibly be code, it has to be assets.

harrygeez 8y ago
all those layers of abstraction where JS is translated into native calls should take up some considerable weight. I believe they use a variation of React Native to share code between their Android and iOS apps. Magic always comes with a price

captainmuon 8y ago

I still don't understand it. WeChat, the Chinese messaging app, is the definition of feature creep, and still "only" 290.1 MB. It not only includes messaging and social network functions, but banking, shopping, taxi hailing, dating, and tons of other features. It's been compared to an OS of its own, you don't live in iOS or Android, you live in WeChat. I think it is a combination of not caring - everybody working at FB has the newest phone and the fastest connections - and maybe not the best developers. Or maybe the developers are really top notch 10x developers that you would expect at a silicon valley megacorp, but they are incentivised wrong and have to push out new features as quickly as possible...

jtokoph 8y ago
As far as I can tell with my limited use of WeChat while in China, most of the extra features are created by third parties and are hosted as third party web apps inside of a web browser. I could be wrong though.