5 ms·

Maybe lessons will be learned, maybe not. The industry seems to have very low standards. Let's let these mistakes happen over and over and let's just patch the

Maybe lessons will be learned, maybe not. The industry seems to have very low standards. Let's let these mistakes happen over and over and let's just patch them as we go. No long-term thinking. Someone should collect all these horrible incidents and start a university course on just plainly what NOT to do.

blantonl 6y ago
Some of the very brightest software engineers in the world work at Facebook. As much as I would love to rip on Facebook, I also understand that integrated software development is hard, and I guarantee you that Facebook is "doing it better" than most. Don't sit in an ivory tower and throw stones in glass houses. Can you guarantee that your own SDLC house is in order? Because it might be, right up until a sneaky edge case nips you in the butt, and then suddenly it isn't.
- mattgreenrocks 6y ago
  Let's avoid lionizing/denigrating here. They're using static initialization and it bit them in the ass again. They should stop using it because it is prone to things like this which result in apps not launching at all. I'd like to see them commit to stop using this method to initialize themselves, and take responsibility for the crashes. Then, IMO, we'd be good. In a scenario like this, I'd hope they'd want to make this bug's recurrence impossible.
  - tdrp 6y ago
    It was horrifying to see how many config changes you have to do to basically beg facebook not to send back data to their server. Most of these were hidden in various corners of the documentation and I still suspect there's crap being sent back without permission. I would love nothing more than to disable the SDK entirely but we have a few hundred thousand users logged into our app via Facebook. Here is our Android config in case anyone's interested: <meta-data android:name="com.facebook.sdk.AutoLogAppEventsEnabled" android:value="false"/> <meta-data android:name="com.facebook.sdk.AdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled" android:value="false"/> <meta-data android:name="com.facebook.sdk.AutoInitEnabled" android:value="false"/>
- emerongi 6y ago
  If an industry leader with "the brightest software engineers in the world" is unable to write their software to a higher than average standard, then I think I am in the very reasonable position to point it out and raise discussion about it. Don't place me in an ivory tower for that. Why should we just sweep this under the rug and call it a day? There is something very important that can be learned from this. Apparently, FB themselves have not learned, because this is not the first time this has happened. Why was this allowed to happen more than once? Did Apple, Google, Spotify, Facebook etc not take any actions? "Shit happens" is one way to look at it. Another way is to question whether we as software engineers are really doing our job properly.
  - mrep 6y ago
    Why are you so angry about Facebook, Apple, Google, and Spotify having a tiny outage? They are not life saving services and only cause a mild inconvenience when they fail which practically never happens for most people especially compared to "average software". > FB themselves have not learned, because this is not the first time this has happened. They have tens of thousands of engineers likely split into hundreds of different teams/microservices focussing on different parts of their software stack. A ton of them are new to it and nobody knows every part of the stack so shit can happen. What is the biggest engineering organization size you have worked for and what was your uptime?
    - filleduchaos 6y ago
      > Why are you so angry about Facebook, Apple, Google, and Spotify having a tiny outage? The linked issue makes it very clear that the "tiny outage" affects literally every app that has the Facebook SDK merely linked, for a frankly dumb reason (static initialization) that they should have learned from the last time it happened. It's not a SaaS. "Uptime" for a linked library is stupid.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Isn't Facebook the place that forces engineers to write code in a open bullpen environment? How can high quality code be written in a madhouse?
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Bright engineers sometimes do some very stupid, arrogant things.
- damnyou 6y ago
  The brightness at places like FB tends to be diverted towards making money, not ensuring software quality. (This is also true at places like Apple, just differently so.)
- jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
  > Some of the very brightest software engineers in the world work at Facebook Like they work in many other companies. In any case, this is not about being bright but about being diligent.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
Industry has low standards because the users have low standards. If the application doesn't start, they are mildly annoyed and go do something else. Eventually the bug will get fixed and they use it again. This has been the case for like 95% of software written in the past decade.

blantonl 6y ago

Some of the very brightest software engineers in the world work at Facebook. As much as I would love to rip on Facebook, I also understand that integrated software development is hard, and I guarantee you that Facebook is "doing it better" than most. Don't sit in an ivory tower and throw stones in glass houses. Can you guarantee that your own SDLC house is in order? Because it might be, right up until a sneaky edge case nips you in the butt, and then suddenly it isn't.

mattgreenrocks 6y ago
Let's avoid lionizing/denigrating here. They're using static initialization and it bit them in the ass again. They should stop using it because it is prone to things like this which result in apps not launching at all. I'd like to see them commit to stop using this method to initialize themselves, and take responsibility for the crashes. Then, IMO, we'd be good. In a scenario like this, I'd hope they'd want to make this bug's recurrence impossible.
- tdrp 6y ago
  It was horrifying to see how many config changes you have to do to basically beg facebook not to send back data to their server. Most of these were hidden in various corners of the documentation and I still suspect there's crap being sent back without permission. I would love nothing more than to disable the SDK entirely but we have a few hundred thousand users logged into our app via Facebook. Here is our Android config in case anyone's interested: <meta-data android:name="com.facebook.sdk.AutoLogAppEventsEnabled" android:value="false"/> <meta-data android:name="com.facebook.sdk.AdvertiserIDCollectionEnabled" android:value="false"/> <meta-data android:name="com.facebook.sdk.AutoInitEnabled" android:value="false"/>
emerongi 6y ago
If an industry leader with "the brightest software engineers in the world" is unable to write their software to a higher than average standard, then I think I am in the very reasonable position to point it out and raise discussion about it. Don't place me in an ivory tower for that. Why should we just sweep this under the rug and call it a day? There is something very important that can be learned from this. Apparently, FB themselves have not learned, because this is not the first time this has happened. Why was this allowed to happen more than once? Did Apple, Google, Spotify, Facebook etc not take any actions? "Shit happens" is one way to look at it. Another way is to question whether we as software engineers are really doing our job properly.
- mrep 6y ago
  Why are you so angry about Facebook, Apple, Google, and Spotify having a tiny outage? They are not life saving services and only cause a mild inconvenience when they fail which practically never happens for most people especially compared to "average software". > FB themselves have not learned, because this is not the first time this has happened. They have tens of thousands of engineers likely split into hundreds of different teams/microservices focussing on different parts of their software stack. A ton of them are new to it and nobody knows every part of the stack so shit can happen. What is the biggest engineering organization size you have worked for and what was your uptime?
  - filleduchaos 6y ago
    > Why are you so angry about Facebook, Apple, Google, and Spotify having a tiny outage? The linked issue makes it very clear that the "tiny outage" affects literally every app that has the Facebook SDK merely linked, for a frankly dumb reason (static initialization) that they should have learned from the last time it happened. It's not a SaaS. "Uptime" for a linked library is stupid.
valuearb 6y ago
Isn't Facebook the place that forces engineers to write code in a open bullpen environment? How can high quality code be written in a madhouse?
saagarjha 6y ago
Bright engineers sometimes do some very stupid, arrogant things.
damnyou 6y ago
The brightness at places like FB tends to be diverted towards making money, not ensuring software quality. (This is also true at places like Apple, just differently so.)
jfkebwjsbx 6y ago
> Some of the very brightest software engineers in the world work at Facebook Like they work in many other companies. In any case, this is not about being bright but about being diligent.

Dirlewanger 6y ago

Industry has low standards because the users have low standards. If the application doesn't start, they are mildly annoyed and go do something else. Eventually the bug will get fixed and they use it again. This has been the case for like 95% of software written in the past decade.