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Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

wired.com

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Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#91

Post by hellofunk »

oskarth wrote: post #47
amelius wrote: post #17

> Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users Answer: because sending short messages from A to B is basically a solved problem. There is even a programming language (Erlang) that was made with this application in mind. The prototypical "Hello World" example for Erlang is a messaging application.

I'm sure you could do it in an afternoon, right? Just like anyone on HN can make a "basic CRUD app" like Facebook in a weekend. I really dislike the arrogant attitude behind these types of comments. Have you worked at WhatsApp? Do you have any idea what they spend their days doing, what their systems look like, what their requirements are like? WhatsApp have close to a billion users, 50 engineers and they manage to p…

Well said.

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#92

Post by elorant »

oskarth wrote: post #47
amelius wrote: post #17

> Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users Answer: because sending short messages from A to B is basically a solved problem. There is even a programming language (Erlang) that was made with this application in mind. The prototypical "Hello World" example for Erlang is a messaging application.

I'm sure you could do it in an afternoon, right? Just like anyone on HN can make a "basic CRUD app" like Facebook in a weekend. I really dislike the arrogant attitude behind these types of comments. Have you worked at WhatsApp? Do you have any idea what they spend their days doing, what their systems look like, what their requirements are like? WhatsApp have close to a billion users, 50 engineers and they manage to p…

Have you worked at WhatsApp? Do you have any idea what they spend their days doing, what their systems look like, what their requirements are like?

Do you? If yes, please enlighten us. Otherwise I don't see the point of your objection. No one said that it can be done in a weekend. All that the parent comment said is that the fundamentals of building WhatsApp are already solved. He/she didn't dismiss it. Just because something isn't rocket science doesn't mean it's not useful.

As for Facebook, people used to dismiss it not because it was seemingly too easy to build but because they failed to see its usage. Long before it became a platform it was pretty much a waste of time. Obviously anything with more than a hundred MM users is difficult to maintain.

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#93

Post by oskarth »

ilitirit wrote: post #89

Worth reading, especially the stuff that is linked: http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/2/26/the-whatsapp-archi...

This was a much better article. I submitted it to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10226317

Perhaps the mods could merge/replace this (pretty bad) Wired article?

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#94

Post by Angostura »

oskarth wrote: post #47
amelius wrote: post #17

> Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users Answer: because sending short messages from A to B is basically a solved problem. There is even a programming language (Erlang) that was made with this application in mind. The prototypical "Hello World" example for Erlang is a messaging application.

I'm sure you could do it in an afternoon, right? Just like anyone on HN can make a "basic CRUD app" like Facebook in a weekend. I really dislike the arrogant attitude behind these types of comments. Have you worked at WhatsApp? Do you have any idea what they spend their days doing, what their systems look like, what their requirements are like? WhatsApp have close to a billion users, 50 engineers and they manage to p…

I'm not sure how you managed to translate "Its not surprising 50 engineers are enough" to "I could do it in an afternoon"

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#95

Post by woah »

fsloth wrote: post #23
kozukumi wrote: post #14

WhatsApp seems to be a great example of designing your system with the best tools available. To go from nothing to pretty much being the de-facto modern replacement for SMS in a couple of years is an amazing achievement. I really need to sit down and spend some time properly learning a functional language. I can hack my way through Haskell code but I do it in a very non-Haskell way. I really need to change that. My p…

For Erlang, there is the book by Joe Armstrong: https://pragprog.com/book/jaerlang2/programming-erlang The problem with learning functional languages is finding pragmatic learning materials. I would claim F# is currently the most approachable functional language (just my opinion but I have at least toyed with the other mainstream offerings). My background is also in C++. The F# materials listed helped me personally t…

Also try learnyousomeerlang.com

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#97

Post by GFischer »

gutnor wrote: post #70
microtonal wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the line of reasoning of your parent still has merit. Erlang OTP was developed for telephony systems and has proven to be very reliable for distributed system. Messaging maps relatively nicely to Erlang OTP and as such Whatsapp are leveraging decades of research and work by Ericsson. Of course, this is how it should be: a good software infrastructure should save users time. Obviously, creating Whatsapp…

I think that indeed the important thing here. The article try to focus a bit too much on some intrinsic qualities of the language as if it was the silver bullet of scalability while the real lesson is that they used the right tool for the job. Not so long ago, maintaining hardware that could support 900M user would have required an IBM scale company. A single developer today can develop, deploy and maintain a medium…

Indeed. It's amazing :) . All the infrastructure-as-a-service stuff REALLY cuts down the overhead.

I'm building a product that only a few years ago would have required a VERY significant investment, but now is basically stacking and connecting lego blocks of services :) - sales-as-a-service isn't mature yet, but if we had it, it would even sell itself :) .

Ok, it's probably a pain if one of the black boxes fails, and I do know enough about the underlying architecture behind the services I'm using - I could probably replicate (badly) most if not all of them given time and money, but why would I?

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#98

Post by txrit »

verytrivial wrote: post #12
jamespo wrote: post #5

I got my first ever spam on whatsapp the other day from someone who had never been a contact, and there seems to be no way whatsoever to prevent it. So maybe they should hire 1 more engineer to work on spam.

I installed whatsapp and the first three messages I received were spam, all within about 30 minutes. I uninstalled whatsapp.

I've used it for at least 4 years, only got one spam message ever. I blocked the sender. I didn't uninstall whatsapp.

Re: Why WhatsApp Only Needs 50 Engineers for Its 900M Users

#100

Post by snake117 »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #53
sidcool wrote: post #50

Comments in this thread are quite cringeworthy. People calling WhatsApp a simple application seem to fail to understand the cost of simplicity under such scale.

I think the point is more that WhatsApp continues to do one thing and to do it well. Conceptually this is simple -- although yes the scale adds plenty of complexity. Other social type services/apps/whatever try to become all things to all people they therefore become complex conceptually as well as due to scale.

I like the "startup feel" that WhatsApp retained; hire few people that can solve immediate problems and roll out necessary features. This alone takes a great deal of work, but admittedly much more manageable because you don't have to deal with unnecessary features that could potentially hinder your customers experience.
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