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Welcoming Fabric to Google

firebase.googleblog.com

31–40 of 133 posts

Re: Welcoming Fabric to Google

#33
post #29
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what it costs to operate Twitter Digits. I can't imagine they are using Twilio as an SMS gateway.

Twitter used to be the biggest SMS sender in United States. Much larger than Twilio, even bigger than operators like Verizon and AT&T. Infrastructure that came from Cloudhopper acquisition with continuous care and improvement gave Twitter a reliable and super cost effective _world-wide_ SMS delivery platform. (I was an employee 2012–2016)

Wow, thanks for the insight. It's easy to forget that Twitter was an SMS centric platform not too long ago.

Re: Welcoming Fabric to Google

#36
post #6

Silly me - I was concerned they somehow acquired the Fabic python library. http://www.fabfile.org/

Buff, same here. It took me a lot of time to realize the blog post doesn't talk about my fab files.

> to free developers from so much of the complexity associated with modern software development, giving them back more time and energy to focus on innovation

I was thinking Fabric is a nice tool indeed, but what is the connection, and why they want to add cloud messaging and analytics.

Re: Welcoming Fabric to Google

#37
post #7

The title is a bit ambiguous. From my understanding, Google (Firebase) acquired Fabric from Twitter (not necessarily "joining"). Fabric is one of the top dev tools I use for iOS. I wonder what kind of change is in store...

Also a big user of Fabric, really hope this means only good things for Fabric users.

I know it won't happen but I wish they'd stay with the dark/Twitter blue theme.

Re: Welcoming Fabric to Google

#38

Knowing Google's reputation with abandoning developer tools and services, can anyone offer suggestions as to possible alternatives? Or counterpoints as to why I shouldn't fear this service degrading over the next year or two? We're currently using Fabric and Crashlytics for our iOS app where I work and this news has prompted us to research alternatives.

Check out Apteligent, better crash reporting as well as performance data, user behavior and business impact. As a bonus your data doesnt go into Twitter or Google's ad networks and it's COPPA compliant.

Re: Welcoming Fabric to Google

#39
Based on my experience with Firebase, it doesn't reduce complexity; it just shifts it around and adds extra costs (both financial and performance costs) to your system.

For any serious app, you still need to have a backend server on the side and your Firebase service often becomes bloated and inefficient. Sometimes you want to store the Firebase data inside your main DB as well and so you end up with two sources of truth and Firebase ends up becoming a third wheel to your project (just a bloated data transport layer).

It's not surprising that Firebase has been sliding in terms of popularity: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/firebase.com

It's good for rapid prototyping/MVC but not for any serious use case.

I think the big lesson in the framework/devtools space is that the more opinionated the tooling is, the less flexible it becomes and the fewer use cases it covers.

Re: Welcoming Fabric to Google

#40
Unlikely that we'll see improvements in Fabric services for a while... presumably, engineering resources will be focused on integrating with Firebase :(

Anyone recommend alternatives for Crashlytics and Digits?

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