Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

engineering.fb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 489 posts

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

#351

Post by lordnacho »

ulfw wrote: post #133
raphaelj wrote: post #19

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.

I've got a 2015 MBP. FB is pretty sluggish, and I wonder why. When you send someone a list of notifications, it's probably worth getting the data ready in case they click it. And the resource usage is pretty big as well.

The mobile app seems to be just fine though, perhaps they want to push people to use that.

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

#352

Post by thelean12 »

ccmcarey wrote: post #207
benbristow wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old Reddit is so damn ugly though apart from the Subreddits which have nice custom themes (although does make for a 00's Myspace-like inconsistent interface) The new Reddit definitely seems a lot faster nowadays than it did when it first launched.

I don't think old reddit is ugly, though it takes some getting used to. Combined with RES for some minor enhancements (navigation etc) and it's great. It's similar to HN. Not fantastic design, but incredible information density and usability.

Incredible? HN has horrific usability.

Good luck knowing when people respond to your comments. Searching takes you to a completely different website. You can't delete comments (which should be a basic privacy ask from this crowd). Click targets are incredibly small.

It took years of begging for them to even implement collapsing comments. And for some reason they put it on the right side (not lined up with the tree level), and made it a super small click target.

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

#353

Post by x3blah »

raphaelj wrote: post #19

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…

Does the compensation of those "engineers" reflect that they have "failed"? Perhaps there is another way to evaluate the work, not from the perspective of the user waiting in front of a screen. Do not forget that the money to pay the salaries of those who do this work does not come from users.

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

#354

Post by v7p1Qbt1im »

troughway wrote: post #71
lancesells wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you could add Twitter and New Reddit to the list as well.

Twitter and the new Reddit aren't in the same category. Twitter is still somewhat usable. Reddit, on the other hand, is an absolute clusterfuck from layout and usability perspective. The choices made were not made for monetary gain, they are simply really bad design choices that for one reason or another have not been fixed.

I like the redesign actually. The default view is terrible, though. Once you start using classic or compact view it‘s usable.

Like 80% of my reddit usage is on mobile by now, though. So it doesn‘t matter that much to me.

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

#355

Post by TwelveNights »

freediver wrote: post #347
ianmobbs wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest assumption you're making here is that most people care about ads - and they don't. Fundamentally, when I'm scrolling through Facebook or Instagram or Reddit or whatever, I just don't care that I see ads while I'm scrolling. I'm not going to pay $1/2/3/4/5 a month to avoid something I don't care about, and that's really only the value add of a subscription-based service. I'd also say most folks don…

I'd really like to understand how does one not care about ads. To me it's like potholes on road. It would require terrific willpower to ignore them.

Although it's getting harder and harder since many platforms try to blend their ads in with the actual site content, I can avoid them reliably well by checking metadata such as the poster, some indication that it's an ad, or if the content is clearly different from what I was expecting.

I wouldn't say it's as bad as potholes on the road, since ads are more predictable.

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

#356

Post by gfodor »

webdood90 wrote: post #342
gfodor wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said it wasn't impressive. I was saying that it's sad that this level of incidental complexity is necessary to run, what is for all intents and purposes, a website.

I think you're unfairly trivializing it by labeling it a "website".

I think you're missing the point by assuming I'm making a statement about Facebook. I'm talking about the fact that this incidental complexity is necessary to do what Facebook does. I don't think my description of it as a website is relevant, it conveys the point that ultimately it's a tragedy that to render obviously simple content to users you are stuck building all this crap to make it work.

Too many people in this thread seem to be projecting that I'm somehow saying this complexity speaks poorly of Facebook's product or engineering. On the contrary, my point was that it's tragic that brilliant minds at Facebook are forced to build all the stuff described in the post just to achieve simple goals like "the page loads quickly", instead of focusing on other problems.

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

#357

Post by kylemh »

3PS wrote: post #122

I'm actually really surprised by the number of comments in this thread about how the new redesign is slower. I've had it since yesterday and it genuinely feels much faster and more responsive than the old Facebook UI - though, to be fair, that's not a huge accomplishment give that the old UI would take forever to finish painting or respond to input. I'd consider it a success, especially when compared to the disaster…

I even used network throttling to do Fast 3G and it's still taking like ~3 seconds at _most_ for everything.

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

#358

Post by BurningFrog »

freediver wrote: post #347
ianmobbs wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest assumption you're making here is that most people care about ads - and they don't. Fundamentally, when I'm scrolling through Facebook or Instagram or Reddit or whatever, I just don't care that I see ads while I'm scrolling. I'm not going to pay $1/2/3/4/5 a month to avoid something I don't care about, and that's really only the value add of a subscription-based service. I'd also say most folks don…

I'd really like to understand how does one not care about ads. To me it's like potholes on road. It would require terrific willpower to ignore them.

I'm not interested in the ads, so I don't notice them if they're not shoved in front of what I am interested in.

I can see that if you consider ads to be inherently offensive, you would notice them wherever they appear, and be annoyed.

But that's not where most people are.

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

#360

Post by BurningFrog »

hckr_news wrote: post #257
jawns wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine this: A "free" ad-driven social networking site that brings in gigantic revenue, but that has to pay thousands of high-priced engineers to implement all of the cruft you just described. versus ... A subscription-based, non-ad-driven social networking site (perhaps operating as a member-owned cooperative?) that brings in much more modest revenue but that also can operate with many fewer engineers because it ca…

People just don’t want to pay for social networking platforms. We’ve been conditioned to think that these things should be free.

Well, they are free, so that probably contributes to that perception.
Post reply on HN