3 ms·

Will FB ever invest and move off PHP? Hiring talent at FB has to be getting harder and PHP probably isn't helping.

nbm 14y ago
PHP is used for a subset of development at Facebook. I'm not sure what the split is, but I would not be surprised if PHP is the primary language used by less than 60% of Software Engineers at Facebook. The rest code in C++, Java, Python, and then a bunch of other languages that are less used. The PHP development environment at Facebook is unlike that found at any other company I'm aware of, and common PHP pitfalls and legacy code are actively "linted" out of the system (as an automated part of the code review process). It still wouldn't be my choice of language to use outside of Facebook, but I have no issue working on the PHP code base here (although I rarely venture into it). Over time, much logic and processing has been offloaded to backend services, with PHP increasingly playing a (largely parallelised) dispatch, post-process, and render role. That will likely continue. With all that said, it is questionable whether it would be an investment to move off of it - which language/environment would you think a good target would be, and why?
- propercoil 14y ago
  re-writing the code of any big project is insane. You are going to face those walls you faced in the past - again. Using this logic you would change the whole codebase every few years.. ridiculous
  - xxpor 14y ago
    Amazon did it in the 2002/2003 timeframe when they moved from Obidos (C++) to Gurupa (Perl/Mason).
    - pjmlp 14y ago
      I though Amazon was still C++ at their main infrastructure.
untog 14y ago
I think you underestimate the number of PHP developers out there. There aren't many on Hacker News because we're all too cool for that stuff, but in the developer world in general there are a ton.
- MichaelGG 14y ago
  I think his point is that real top-tier developers are going to despite working with such a grotty language as PHP, so it hurts their hiring process that way. Whereas if they worked in a superior language (an ML, Haskell, a LISP...) they'd attract talent. Who wants to deal with a language such such inane design decisions all day? I'd imagine people signing up to work at FB do so despite the fact they use PHP, not because of it.
  - chadzawistowski 14y ago
    I don't know, working on HHVM certainly seems interesting enough to attract good developers.
  - nbm 14y ago
    It's not like people who work at Facebook have to use PHP anyway - there are quite a few who work in "superior" languages, although most just use C++, Java, and Python. In my experience, the top-tier developers enjoy challenges and solving problems, and languages are just tools they use to defeat those challenges and solve those problems. Sometimes it's a language they really enjoy using. Sometimes it's a situation where that language isn't a suitable one.
  - Firehed 14y ago
    I just don't understand the hate. Like any language it has some syntactic quirks and inconsistencies. There's no way to objectively say that one language is superior to another, because there are so many metrics that contribute to superiority and every person in the world is going to weight those various metrics slightly differently. I imagine it's neither "despite" nor "because" of PHP use; any top-tier developer is going to use the tools available to him/her, rather than pick an employer in order to use a specific set of tools. Lower-quality developers may do so, but that's probably because they're less likely to know the right tool for the job (eg someone may hate functional programming and avoid jobs that use it, but that's because they don't know when FP is the ideal way to solve the problem)
res0nat0r 14y ago
I'm sure having some PHP code at a company like Facebook isn't deterring any serious candidates. Working for a company with almost a billion users who've created software like Cassandra, Thrift, HipHop and Haystack and working on writing loosely coupled systems which will run across thousands of machines; analyzing 10s of PB of data every day with Hadoop, there are definitely very specific and challenging tasks which would attract tons of talent. I think having a PHP codebase there isn't indicative that your new job would be sitting and writing crappy PHP code templates all day and wanting to kill yourself because it is so boring. Just my 2c.
michael_miller 14y ago
First, it's really hard to do a large rewrite of software. Netscape, for example, made the mistake of trying to rewrite their browser from scratch, and it killed them [1]. Second, what evidence to you base your statement "hiring talent at FB has to be getting harder"? If you're talking about market cap / upside, Google has had no problems hiring (well, relative to other tech companies, anyway), despite a market cap 3.5x+ what FB is today. Lastly, FB is not all PHP. A lot of services are written in C++ or Java, and use Thrift to talk to the frontend [2]. Thrift allows a more gradual movement off PHP, by moving isolated components to other languages individually. [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html [2] http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Engineering/What-is-Facebooks-architecture http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Engineering/What-is-Facebooks-...

nbm 14y ago

PHP is used for a subset of development at Facebook. I'm not sure what the split is, but I would not be surprised if PHP is the primary language used by less than 60% of Software Engineers at Facebook. The rest code in C++, Java, Python, and then a bunch of other languages that are less used. The PHP development environment at Facebook is unlike that found at any other company I'm aware of, and common PHP pitfalls and legacy code are actively "linted" out of the system (as an automated part of the code review process). It still wouldn't be my choice of language to use outside of Facebook, but I have no issue working on the PHP code base here (although I rarely venture into it). Over time, much logic and processing has been offloaded to backend services, with PHP increasingly playing a (largely parallelised) dispatch, post-process, and render role. That will likely continue. With all that said, it is questionable whether it would be an investment to move off of it - which language/environment would you think a good target would be, and why?

propercoil 14y ago
re-writing the code of any big project is insane. You are going to face those walls you faced in the past - again. Using this logic you would change the whole codebase every few years.. ridiculous
- xxpor 14y ago
  Amazon did it in the 2002/2003 timeframe when they moved from Obidos (C++) to Gurupa (Perl/Mason).
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    I though Amazon was still C++ at their main infrastructure.

untog 14y ago

I think you underestimate the number of PHP developers out there. There aren't many on Hacker News because we're all too cool for that stuff, but in the developer world in general there are a ton.

MichaelGG 14y ago
I think his point is that real top-tier developers are going to despite working with such a grotty language as PHP, so it hurts their hiring process that way. Whereas if they worked in a superior language (an ML, Haskell, a LISP...) they'd attract talent. Who wants to deal with a language such such inane design decisions all day? I'd imagine people signing up to work at FB do so despite the fact they use PHP, not because of it.
- chadzawistowski 14y ago
  I don't know, working on HHVM certainly seems interesting enough to attract good developers.
- nbm 14y ago
  It's not like people who work at Facebook have to use PHP anyway - there are quite a few who work in "superior" languages, although most just use C++, Java, and Python. In my experience, the top-tier developers enjoy challenges and solving problems, and languages are just tools they use to defeat those challenges and solve those problems. Sometimes it's a language they really enjoy using. Sometimes it's a situation where that language isn't a suitable one.
- Firehed 14y ago
  I just don't understand the hate. Like any language it has some syntactic quirks and inconsistencies. There's no way to objectively say that one language is superior to another, because there are so many metrics that contribute to superiority and every person in the world is going to weight those various metrics slightly differently. I imagine it's neither "despite" nor "because" of PHP use; any top-tier developer is going to use the tools available to him/her, rather than pick an employer in order to use a specific set of tools. Lower-quality developers may do so, but that's probably because they're less likely to know the right tool for the job (eg someone may hate functional programming and avoid jobs that use it, but that's because they don't know when FP is the ideal way to solve the problem)

res0nat0r 14y ago

I'm sure having some PHP code at a company like Facebook isn't deterring any serious candidates. Working for a company with almost a billion users who've created software like Cassandra, Thrift, HipHop and Haystack and working on writing loosely coupled systems which will run across thousands of machines; analyzing 10s of PB of data every day with Hadoop, there are definitely very specific and challenging tasks which would attract tons of talent. I think having a PHP codebase there isn't indicative that your new job would be sitting and writing crappy PHP code templates all day and wanting to kill yourself because it is so boring. Just my 2c.

michael_miller 14y ago

First, it's really hard to do a large rewrite of software. Netscape, for example, made the mistake of trying to rewrite their browser from scratch, and it killed them [1]. Second, what evidence to you base your statement "hiring talent at FB has to be getting harder"? If you're talking about market cap / upside, Google has had no problems hiring (well, relative to other tech companies, anyway), despite a market cap 3.5x+ what FB is today. Lastly, FB is not all PHP. A lot of services are written in C++ or Java, and use Thrift to talk to the frontend [2]. Thrift allows a more gradual movement off PHP, by moving isolated components to other languages individually. [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html [2] http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Engineering/What-is-Facebooks-architecture http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Engineering/What-is-Facebooks-...