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Rebuilding our tech stack for the new facebook.com

engineering.fb.com

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

#411

Post by tomc1985 »

aylmao wrote: post #265

A big point of contention in the comments here lies around the concept of what a website should be. A school of thought in web development believes the web to be the next frontier in application development. For them it makes sense that websites like this feel and act like apps, both as an end-user (animations, transitions without full-page reloading, rich dynamic content, etc) and as a developer (client-side state m…

I'm pretty sure it's because the Documents style isn't viable for Facebook as a business, their money comes from all the interactive JS crap they insist on shoving into their product

Tech has this global problem of technology products never being what they say they are on the tin. It's like those front-end/back-end iceberg memes -- what the user wants and what the business wants are just barely in alignment. This needs to end.

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

#412

Post by x3blah »

aylmao wrote: post #265

A big point of contention in the comments here lies around the concept of what a website should be. A school of thought in web development believes the web to be the next frontier in application development. For them it makes sense that websites like this feel and act like apps, both as an end-user (animations, transitions without full-page reloading, rich dynamic content, etc) and as a developer (client-side state m…

Under the document-like school of thought, less "engineers" would need to be employed. Also, less computing resources would be required on both the client side. Money, not to mention time, could be saved.

Perhaps application-like school of thought probably allows for more user manipulation. metrics and tracking.

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

#414

Post by k__ »

aylmao wrote: post #265

A big point of contention in the comments here lies around the concept of what a website should be. A school of thought in web development believes the web to be the next frontier in application development. For them it makes sense that websites like this feel and act like apps, both as an end-user (animations, transitions without full-page reloading, rich dynamic content, etc) and as a developer (client-side state m…

No, the problem isn't that the new FB acts like an app, the problem is that it's clunky as hell.

It's like a bad copy of "the new Twitter" and even Twitter isn't really good.

The only end-user software from FB is Messenger Lite. It's quick and does what I expect it to do.

Even the voice chat is good and I didn't expect a lite version of a messenger to have it.

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

#415

Post by kart23 »

polote wrote: post #254

Future will tell, but I do think this is a good strategic move by FB. FB is now seen as an app for old people and not fun at all, and probably one of the reason is because of how it looks. With the new design, things are more shiny, and the product now looks cool. How a product is perceived has a big influence on how people use it, (for example why people use snap when they can send the same videos on insta). I would…

It's not seen as an app for old people. A lot of college students use fb religiously, and it's still the place to go for nearly any college discussion.

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

#416

Post by jawns »

ianmobbs wrote: post #336
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…

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 don't think it's just about the ads themselves. It's about the fact that when a site is free, its users become the product, and there are all sorts of user-hostile design decisions made, which leads to all sorts of unnecessary bloat.

Think of it as the difference between a for-profit bank and a credit union. The bank exists to maximize returns for its shareholders. The credit union exists solely for benefit of its members. So the credit union isn't going to try to employ sneaky fine-print fees, because that's not what the members want.

In a similar vein, you might not care about ads and may have trained yourself to ignore them, but you might care about performance, which is sluggish because of all the cruft, or you might care about privacy, or you might care about being marketed to in more subtle ways than display ads.

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

#418

Post by Endlessly »

ianmobbs wrote: post #340
AlexandrB wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn’t. Informed consent is not the same as shoving a ToS/EULA in front of someone who may not have the legal or technological education to understand it or its consequences. From the Wikipedia definition[1] of informed consent (in medicine): > An informed consent can be said to have been given based upon a clear appreciation and understanding of the facts, implications, and consequences of an action. Adequate…

Fortunately, Facebooks ToS[0] is not full of legalese or jargon, and I'm sure anybody with enough technological education to sign up for Facebook can understand it too. [0] https://www.facebook.com/terms.php

Quick read of it and it is obvious that document likely cost millions for Facebook to produce and with the aid of countless hours of legal professionals who in sum likely have 1000s of years of legal experience.

Claiming the average person is able to understand scope of that document— and the likely 1000s of internal documents related to it, and the 100s of thousand pages of related legal code and case law is a stretch.

Document also does not disclose Facebook is subject to secret court orders, gag orders, etc.

— and that doesn’t even begin to cover the knowledge required to understand the related technology and the impact it might have on the users.

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

#419

Post by sgustard »

aylmao wrote: post #265

A big point of contention in the comments here lies around the concept of what a website should be. A school of thought in web development believes the web to be the next frontier in application development. For them it makes sense that websites like this feel and act like apps, both as an end-user (animations, transitions without full-page reloading, rich dynamic content, etc) and as a developer (client-side state m…

Well I certainly want Google Maps to act like an app (which it does): panning, zooming and so on. And I'm happy for Hacker News to act like a traditional website. At that point it's a false dichotomy: different solutions for different problems, yes?

As an analogy: some pop-up books are amazing works of art. But reading would be frustrating if every book was a pop-up book.

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

#420

Post by vosper »

rickyvetter wrote: post #302
vosper wrote: post #25

I saw no mention of Reason or ReasonReact. I thought they rewrote Messenger in Reason, and so I figured facebook.com would be next. Did Reason fall out of favor or something?

Hey - maintainer of ReasonReact here. We don't believe in mandating the tools that people use and there are plenty of good reasons to use TS, Flow, PureScript, Rust, etc. Folks on the Messenger Web team in Facebook like Reason as their language of choice. Reason is used heavily on Messaging code in the old facebook.com and in this rebuilt version. The rebuilding of facebook.com was done quickly and involves almost ev…

Thanks for the info :)
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