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Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta

engineering.fb.com

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Re: Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta

#51

Post by dom96 »

What's always been interesting about the languages Meta uses is the story of the rise and fall of the D programming language at Meta. I wasn't around at the time when Andrei was working there and advocating for its adoption, but it seemed like he hit a wall at some point. By the time I joined all D services were being deprecated or rewritten.

Rust seems to be doing far better. Though it's also worth noting that Go never got the same adoption as Rust either. Wonder if someone more familiar with the story of all these languages at Meta can comment on why that is.

Re: Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta

#52

Post by metadaemon »

preseinger wrote: post #5

I'm surprised at the list. Rust is fundamentally immature, C++ is fundamentally intractable, Python is fundamentally unusable at scale, and Hack is, well, no discussion needed. Strong negative signal for potential candidates.

A weak troll attempt by someone who was more than likely recently rejected in a Meta interview. :P

Re: Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta

#53

Post by closeparen »

philjr wrote: post #25

I remember interviewing there in 2009 and I stopped counting the number of languages I was told were being used on the SRO / backend side. I'm sure it wasn't, but it seemed like it was basically "everything" :-)

Most big companies use "everything" in some capacity, which is why "X uses Y" type statements are meaningless. The question is what's primary, what's supported, what's common in practice.

Re: Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta

#54

Post by hunterb123 »

codetrotter wrote: post #22
vo_9812 wrote: post #2

I am excited to see Rust gaining popularity and becoming a first-class language at Meta.

> Rust gaining popularity As it should. Beyond that though. How relevant even is Meta anymore? They are a dying company aren’t they? Facebook hasn’t been relevant in ages. Instagram is losing footing too. Only way I can see them maintaining relevance is if one or more of the following happens: - They turn out to be right in their bet on VR and Metaverse. Personally I doubt it, and I think VR and Metaverse is closer a…

React/RN is the largest web & native cross-platform framework, Jest is one of the main testing tools as well.

The Facebook app itself is massive, it's the most used classifieds, basically replacing craigslist, still used for many groups and many local businesses use it solely, their ad business is still raking it in. Event coordination and connections are maintained on FB since most everyone has it.

Instagram isn't dying either, it's very popular for both advertisers and influencers, TikTok stole some but they are really two different services, one static images one short videos with some overlap to compete.

Your social circle may not use those apps but A LOT of people do.

I don't use any social media because I'm not social, but I have to use FB to see community updates, to coordinate with groups, to sell/buy things, to lookup businesses without websites, etc. I don't see TikTok or others having that moat or even attempting to dig it.

Facebook has the businesses, the users, and the developers. In no way are they dying.

Re: Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta

#56

Post by louthy »

Xeoncross wrote: post #17

> Meta’s primary supported server-side languages are Hack, C++, Rust, and Python. > For specific use cases, we support other languages, including Java, Erlang, Haskell, and Go Makes sense. Python because ML. Rust because of performance. C++ and Java because all-the-things. Go because 75% of all cncf.io projects are Go. Haskell because elitism. Erlang because stability. /s I think the real story is that migrating off…

> Haskell because elitism

Was there really a need for this comment? How about: for correctness and expressivity

Re: Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta

#57

Post by tuetuopay »

While this is cool to see "how the big guys do it", this article is worthless. Specifically, it lacks one fundamental thing: why.

Why isn't Go in this list? It is very surprising since it feels like all off tech jumped on the Go bandwagon, though I won't complain. I can only guess at why, but it would be very interesting to see why.

Why is Rust in the list, other than "so many people started to use it internally that we were kind of forced to officially support it" (at least that's how I understand their article)? Similarly I won't complain, but it'd be great as to what real benefits they pull off. At least it's great to know that Rust is considered mature by Meta, which adds them to the list of Big Corp endorsing it (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, ...).

Re: Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta

#59

Post by pjmlp »

runevault wrote: post #32
melling wrote: post #30

“Since we began our journey with Rust, the number of projects using Rust inside Meta has increased at an accelerated rate” That almost sounds like an endorsement. I’ve been holding off learning Rust. However, it seems like Rust adoption is reaching a tipping point.

Rust adoption very much seems to be ramping up within the really big companies. Google talking about it both for Android and Chrome, FB with a ton of things, Apple had uses for it I think but I'm blanking on what, Amazon is using it for at least some new AWS infrastucture...

Note that on Android it is only endorsed for system code by Google itself and OEMs, officially there are no plans to support it on the NDK, or Android Studio.

Re: Programming languages endorsed for server-side use at Meta

#60

Post by wrycoder »

WJW wrote: post #34
rafaelturk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curius why people downvote this.. its a perfect valid argument.

No it's not. It's just a list of opinions without any actual arguments.

It's a summary list of key/value pairs, with the values being terse codewords for the well-know arguments.
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