3 ms·

I believe you are falling in a trap that some people fall when they do this kind of analysis; I don't doubt that you (and lots of other users on this forum) are

by mping 8y ago

I believe you are falling in a trap that some people fall when they do this kind of analysis; I don't doubt that you (and lots of other users on this forum) are completely capable of doing a facebook-like app that is much more efficient in terms of space and performance. However, facebook didn't wrote the ios app overnight. They got to this point because of a long trajectory of lots of tradeoffs, some heavily related to the human, organisation, social side of software development - its hard to coordinate an effort across probably dozens of teams. You're commenting on a 10ton freight train travelling at 50km/h saying you can build a faster car. Well, they probably started with a car, too but built a train along the way. I'm sure if they rewrote it it would be much better but that's just how things are in software. Doesn't mean we shouldn't look at the app size, but don't forget the trajectory instead of looking at the last data point.

Const-me 8y ago
> because of a long trajectory of lots of tradeoffs, some heavily related to the human, organisation, social side of software development - its hard to coordinate an effort across probably dozens of teams. I agree with you on that, but hard ≠ impossible. I was fortunate to work in a couple of large companies with good technical management. The companies did OK even for large software with 10+ years of legacy C++ code. It indeed required significant effort to coordinate teams and people. But if you’re a technical lead in a software company, it’s exactly your job to accomplish that. If user wants to travel by a car and a company’s telling them “you can ride our awesome freight train instead”, it might mean the company has failed to manage the software development part of their business. It’s even possible the developers were top-notch professionals, but technical management wasn’t, and the management prevented developers from doing their job well.
- mping 8y ago
  Fair enough, I think I understand what you mean. FB, as an app, could be much better.

by mping 8y ago

Const-me 8y ago

> because of a long trajectory of lots of tradeoffs, some heavily related to the human, organisation, social side of software development - its hard to coordinate an effort across probably dozens of teams. I agree with you on that, but hard ≠ impossible. I was fortunate to work in a couple of large companies with good technical management. The companies did OK even for large software with 10+ years of legacy C++ code. It indeed required significant effort to coordinate teams and people. But if you’re a technical lead in a software company, it’s exactly your job to accomplish that. If user wants to travel by a car and a company’s telling them “you can ride our awesome freight train instead”, it might mean the company has failed to manage the software development part of their business. It’s even possible the developers were top-notch professionals, but technical management wasn’t, and the management prevented developers from doing their job well.

mping 8y ago
Fair enough, I think I understand what you mean. FB, as an app, could be much better.