11–20 of 27 posts
Evan is hilarious, check out all the copy on http://phabricator.org/ for an example. However he should probably have been described as ex-Facebook, he left quite a while ago.
Evan is hilarious, check out all the copy on http://phabricator.org/ for an example. However he should probably have been described as ex-Facebook, he left quite a while ago.
'Facebook engineers rave about Phabricator, describing it with glowing terms like "okay" and "mandatory".'
Things break all the time in any company, but by understanding that frequent breakages occur, and adapting your development process to that understanding, you enable fast recovery and ultimately less breakage and greater security in the long run.
Evan is hilarious, check out all the copy on http://phabricator.org/ for an example. However he should probably have been described as ex-Facebook, he left quite a while ago.
This made me crack up the first time I read it! 'Facebook engineers rave about Phabricator, describing it with glowing terms like "okay" and "mandatory".'
If an engineer at Bank of America said something to this tune, it'd have tremendous negative consequence as it should. Facebook is reaching a point where breaking things should not be okay simply because it opens up the possibility of breaking privacy settings and causing great damage. Lots of people have pretty sensitive data within facebook with very granular privacy settings. When I read this attitude from faceboo…
The "break fast and move things" mantra isn't black and white, nor is it universal. It is a general alignment that, at the high level says, don't be afraid to make calculated mistakes but be prepared to quickly respond to feedback and those mistakes as appropriate. That means a privacy or a security issue will be tackled with the utmost urgency--we would even shut down the site if we didn't have a quick fix for a sec…
Even if it took only 30 seconds to find the error and the entire site was unplugged from the web so you could fix the bug, the damage is done, it's permanent and it's devastating. Facebook is crossing the line from failures being trivial to failures being potentially catastrophic. Sad, perhaps, by the standards around here, but some people conduct their lives on Facebook -- encouraged by Facebook to do so, mind you -- and you guys are treating it a little more seriously than a hackathon, from the sounds of it.
I honestly think that "Move fast and break things" might be the singularly most important software engineering mantra of our age. Things break all the time in any company, but by understanding that frequent breakages occur, and adapting your development process to that understanding, you enable fast recovery and ultimately less breakage and greater security in the long run.
See for example: your car, your bank (not the website, the backend), the space shuttle, the Fed, anything important. Some places cannot accept the supposed fact of frequent outages and failure, and engineer for that reality instead.
I don't know how you're concluding that the hackday coding methodology creates more secure code, unless you are simply unaware of the industrial standards to which other fields' programmers are held.
I honestly think that "Move fast and break things" might be the singularly most important software engineering mantra of our age. Things break all the time in any company, but by understanding that frequent breakages occur, and adapting your development process to that understanding, you enable fast recovery and ultimately less breakage and greater security in the long run.
This is inane, frankly. There are people who code to a much higher standard than this. People live and die by the code they write, so they can't accept "things break all the time ..." and forget about writing correct code. See for example: your car, your bank (not the website, the backend), the space shuttle, the Fed, anything important. Some places cannot accept the supposed fact of frequent outages and failure, and…
However, few companies are rated on the quality of their code. Rather, most companies are rated on how well they serve their customers needs, including the vast majority of companies discussed on Hacker News.
The way to delight your customers is to iterate quickly. The way to achieve great software is also to iterate quickly. That is not a coincidence. Willingness to withstand a little bit of breakage allows companies to move fast. This contributes to an overall _higher_ level of quality, leading not to frequent outages (Facebook does not have frequent outages and failure), but to more robust product.
I am aware of how people build software in more traditional fields (my background is in compilers and static analysis). I am also aware that traditional software development techniques are being eclipsed by those who are willing to throw off the shackles of the past. The "hackday coding methodology" may not be useful to make the code for your car, but the techniques used to build your car are not useful for building a successful SaaS product.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is inane, frankly. There are people who code to a much higher standard than this. People live and die by the code they write, so they can't accept "things break all the time ..." and forget about writing correct code. See for example: your car, your bank (not the website, the backend), the space shuttle, the Fed, anything important. Some places cannot accept the supposed fact of frequent outages and failure, and…
Of course I wasn't talking about banks and space shuttles, that would be inane. Some places can't accept outages and failure, and naturally "move fast and break things" is an unacceptable mantra for those places. However, few companies are rated on the quality of their code. Rather, most companies are rated on how well they serve their customers needs, including the vast majority of companies discussed on Hacker News…
If an engineer at Bank of America said something to this tune, it'd have tremendous negative consequence as it should. Facebook is reaching a point where breaking things should not be okay simply because it opens up the possibility of breaking privacy settings and causing great damage. Lots of people have pretty sensitive data within facebook with very granular privacy settings. When I read this attitude from faceboo…
- Accidentally opening all profiles up, causing users to have to reset them.
- Accidentally setting all photos to public, causing users to have to reset them.
- Syncing many peoples contacts to @facebook email addresses, in many cases deleting the users original contact lists
- (the last straw) - letting private messages go onto the public wall. Facebook deny's this happened, but I personally know two people (no friend of a friend business) who this has happened to. In both cases there were very private messages from their ex-partners, the kind of thing they'd take extreme alarm to if they were on their wall. Both quickly deleted all messages when it happened, rather than saving the evidence.
Move fast and break things when there's private info at stake, is not the correct way to do things. I stopped posting to facebook and am going to close my account (and move to G+, who have better quality controls), and have non-tech friends who have decided that's the way to go after the private messages thing.