Live data from Hacker News

Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

engineering.fb.com

131–140 of 489 posts

Re: Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

#131
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I won’t take blame for that. Still haven’t found a use case for React/Angular or SASS/whatever. If I’m guilty of something is not recognizing the validity of those tools, as I’m sure there are. But 2MB CSS is simply inconceivable to me.

Big +1. I would be really interested to find one, only ONE, website where React/Angular was really bringing a better experience and better final product than a standard pure JS with simple Ajax system.

Come on man, real programmers use assembly and roll their own browsers.

Re: Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

#132

I rarely use Facebook, but when I do I use https://m.facebook.com instead of the main site. Similarly i.reddit.com and the HTML version of Gmail. Which aren't great looking, but pretty usable. I hope these versions will be maintained for a long time.

Gmail is a disgrace. I've been using it for so long and I miss the version from 2005. It's so slow today I just hate using it. It's really sad because it was a great product and that's why it took over email.

Re: Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

#133

Quite sincerely, it's a total failure. I got the chance to try the new interface, and it's so slow that it's barely usable. It's even slower than the old website, that was already painfully slow. Loading a random profile takes 8 seconds. Opening a messenger discussion takes 6 seconds. It reminds me of the new Reddit website. Facebook was more enjoyable to use 12 years ago. It's really sad that in 2020, 10k+ engineers…

Agreed. Using this on the i9 8-core 16" MBP and the thing just isn't fluid. Has anyone at Facebook even bothered testing this on computers people actually use? Like some 2015 Macbook Pro? Or a 2014 Macbook Air or whatever.

I wouldn't even want to know how it runs on those.

Re: Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

#134

Quite sincerely, it's a total failure. I got the chance to try the new interface, and it's so slow that it's barely usable. It's even slower than the old website, that was already painfully slow. Loading a random profile takes 8 seconds. Opening a messenger discussion takes 6 seconds. It reminds me of the new Reddit website. Facebook was more enjoyable to use 12 years ago. It's really sad that in 2020, 10k+ engineers…

Facebook was more enjoyable to use 12 years ago We'll see what the data show. I have been reading comments about Facebook's supposed decline for as long as I've been aware of Facebook and yet their published numbers continually show greater engagement. https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo...

Engagement isn't just driven by "enjoyability", so that's not a particular convincing counter-argument.

Re: Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

#135

Quite sincerely, it's a total failure. I got the chance to try the new interface, and it's so slow that it's barely usable. It's even slower than the old website, that was already painfully slow. Loading a random profile takes 8 seconds. Opening a messenger discussion takes 6 seconds. It reminds me of the new Reddit website. Facebook was more enjoyable to use 12 years ago. It's really sad that in 2020, 10k+ engineers…

Facebook was more enjoyable to use 12 years ago We'll see what the data show. I have been reading comments about Facebook's supposed decline for as long as I've been aware of Facebook and yet their published numbers continually show greater engagement. https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo...

There’s a lot of fake profiles though and I think a lot more than they’re prepared to admit. Even brazen binary options trading scam profiles don’t get removed - it appears that they’re happy as long as the number are going up.

Re: Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

better experience for who? For the developer it's a way better experience. For the consumer it often isn't because of inefficient bloat, but if effort is put into packaging it sensibly it can be better thanks to build pipelines/optimizations. In my experience, there's a lot of apps that would have never gotten written in the first place without the boost from React/Angular/etc. It simply takes way longer (which means…

I've been doing FE development on and off since IE5/6, starting out with pure JS and Ajax, and in my opinion the modern FE developer experience using the major frameworks is a generational improvement over the messes we used to write. There are still frustrations, but it's a lot better than it used to be. Browser API's and CSS have all improved drastically since then, so pure JS and Ajax isn't as bad. I still avoid f…

Agree completely. I'm amazed at how good pure JS is these days. I only use React when I have a non-trivial UI that I need to write. It's just not worth it for simple stuff. That said I don't do a ton of FE work these days, so my opinion is less relevant.

Re: Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

#137

Quite sincerely, it's a total failure. I got the chance to try the new interface, and it's so slow that it's barely usable. It's even slower than the old website, that was already painfully slow. Loading a random profile takes 8 seconds. Opening a messenger discussion takes 6 seconds. It reminds me of the new Reddit website. Facebook was more enjoyable to use 12 years ago. It's really sad that in 2020, 10k+ engineers…

Facebook was more enjoyable to use 12 years ago We'll see what the data show. I have been reading comments about Facebook's supposed decline for as long as I've been aware of Facebook and yet their published numbers continually show greater engagement. https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo...

>and yet their published numbers continually show greater engagement.

Do you think this might have anything to do with the fact that, as an advertising company, it's crucial that they are able to tell companies that engagement is increasing?

Re: Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

#138
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I won’t take blame for that. Still haven’t found a use case for React/Angular or SASS/whatever. If I’m guilty of something is not recognizing the validity of those tools, as I’m sure there are. But 2MB CSS is simply inconceivable to me.

Big +1. I would be really interested to find one, only ONE, website where React/Angular was really bringing a better experience and better final product than a standard pure JS with simple Ajax system.

I can't help but feel like the people that feel this way are people that don't build maintain and modify customer focused web products for a living.

Re: Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

#139
post #5

I have been using Facebook for like +10years. Facebook used to be reference for speed and usability. I left it ~4 years ago. Last day I entered again for curiosity. It's so sad. Strange interface, slow, unresponsive. It's sad.

Facebook used to be reference for speed and usability On web, for a while. Remember when Facebook's iPhone app came out, it was a disaster. It was so slow, I could open the app, then take the elevator down to the basement of my building, drop off some outgoing mail, and return to my apartment before it finished updating the news feed. It was legendary in its time for its slowness. At first, nobody complained because…

Remember when they had to monkey patch the android runtime because their app had too many methods? https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/under-th...

It's a fun hack, and I enjoy spectacle, but it might be a sign that you are complicating your app more than you need.

Re: Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

#140

Quite sincerely, it's a total failure. I got the chance to try the new interface, and it's so slow that it's barely usable. It's even slower than the old website, that was already painfully slow. Loading a random profile takes 8 seconds. Opening a messenger discussion takes 6 seconds. It reminds me of the new Reddit website. Facebook was more enjoyable to use 12 years ago. It's really sad that in 2020, 10k+ engineers…

Facebook was more enjoyable to use 12 years ago We'll see what the data show. I have been reading comments about Facebook's supposed decline for as long as I've been aware of Facebook and yet their published numbers continually show greater engagement. https://jakeseliger.com/2018/11/14/is-there-an-actual-facebo...

I've seen people in the past make the mistake of correlating "Enjoyment" with "Higher Engagement", but you want to be really careful there.

For example - Flame wars increase engagement, even if people feel drained and frustrated afterward.

I understand why it's a useful metric - It's particularly valuable if your business model depends on time-on-site to sell ads.

But I wouldn't recommend them as a proxy for enjoyment by any means.

Post reply on HN