LightSpeed: Rewriting Messenger’s codebase for a faster, smaller, simpler app

Post by throwaway55554 » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 8:30 PM UTC

tasogare wrote: post #257

hvidgaard wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How in the name of everything did they manage to write 1.7M lines of code for a messenger app? That is an astonishingly large code base! We're talking about an instant messenger app with heaps of features, having a LoC footprint 3.5% of the size of modern Windows.

> Since then, we’ve added payments, camera effects, Stories, GIFs, and even video chat capabilities Simple: they added tons of crap nobody care. On this list, I only use video. Messenger is valuable because of the network effect, but feature wise 2003’s MSN was good enough.

Post by WhyNotHugo » Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 1:01 AM UTC

Jaruzel wrote: post #253

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #152

I don't know anyone who uses Messenger, yet, I've heard of people moving to specific countries where it's the de facto and you can't have a social life without it. I'm also aware of how iMessages and SMS are used in the US, yet this is very US-specific, and I don't believe any other country uses SMS. For Chinese people, WeChat is the standard, and what pretty much anyone uses. In Argentina and the Netherlands (and I…

A lot of it is driven by differing low end data plans. In some countries even the cheapest tariff has adequate data allowance, in other countries, data is an expensive add-on. So it's entirely conceivable that in some places, someone with a limited income only has SMS bundled as a free service on their plan, with data either not enabled, or expensive pay-as-you-go. Therefore in that demographic SMS messaging will be…