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iOS at Facebook [pdf]

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Re: iOS at Facebook [pdf]

#61

Post by gorena »

zeeshanm wrote: post #48
asdfqwe1 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, most of these specific signs have been removed now/changed (I was an intern there fall 2013). They actually talked about how that used to be a slogan, but breaking stuff isn't really acceptable anymore because facebook is so big. They still wanted us to move really fast though...

From what I have heard they are now expecting their employees to still move fast, break stuff, but be ready to be penalized for it if you do. So, really, they are encouraging their employees to move at a steady pace with occasional hack nights when there is an upcoming release in the near-term. Facebook is growing old.

Does Facebook pay overtime for "hack nights"?

Re: iOS at Facebook [pdf]

#62

Post by buffoon »

gorena wrote: post #61
zeeshanm wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I have heard they are now expecting their employees to still move fast, break stuff, but be ready to be penalized for it if you do. So, really, they are encouraging their employees to move at a steady pace with occasional hack nights when there is an upcoming release in the near-term. Facebook is growing old.

Does Facebook pay overtime for "hack nights"?

High profile companies seem to have a privilege complex I.e. you're lucky to be working for them.

Re: iOS at Facebook [pdf]

#63

Post by btmiller »

cableshaft wrote: post #22

This was pretty interesting. It would have never occurred to me that XCode, Git, etc. couldn't handle as much as you throw at it, but it kind of makes sense how they explain it here. Still, I don't think I would like to actually work in that environment where the codebase changed so much so often and had so much dead and redundant code, so I guess I'm glad my interview with them didn't go terribly well (got asked que…

> got asked questions by non tech-type person who was looking for keywords to obscure concepts as answers and didn't understand my conceptual but keyword-less responses

Simple fact of the matter is that you're going to run into those type of questions by non-technical people at any big software company with which you interview. It's on you to be able to smell out what they want and answer with something that demonstrates your abilities and gives them what they're looking for.

Re: iOS at Facebook [pdf]

#65

Post by gorena »

xenadu02 wrote: post #52

It's all a bunch of bored engineers looking for ways to be clever but without anyone to take ownership of the codebase. There is absolutely no reason for the Facebook app to be so large and have so many classes. The app itself doesn't do that much.

Yeah, the difference between Facebook and Instagram or Twitter is incremental. They basically do the same stuff, Facebook does a little bit more (although, they entirely removed direct messages). Why is the Facebook app so huge?

Re: iOS at Facebook [pdf]

#67

Post by gorena »

jonknee wrote: post #42
cableshaft wrote: post #22

This was pretty interesting. It would have never occurred to me that XCode, Git, etc. couldn't handle as much as you throw at it, but it kind of makes sense how they explain it here. Still, I don't think I would like to actually work in that environment where the codebase changed so much so often and had so much dead and redundant code, so I guess I'm glad my interview with them didn't go terribly well (got asked que…

Apple uses XCode to make iOS (and OS X and even XCode!), so it obviously can handle more than Facebook.app, but it doesn't fit their culture. Same with Git frankly.

Or they could just modularize into frameworks and use Carthage?

But, whatever, rewrite Xcode I guess.

Re: iOS at Facebook [pdf]

#68

Post by chuckcode »

Would be interested to see some comparison with the Android app which seems to have most of the same functionality at 1/4 the size with 25MB [1] compared to the 100MB of iOS. Seems like either iOS team at FB has significant cruft laying around or iOS doesn't scale as well as Android and FB is hacking around that. Possibly a bit of both but think it would be an interesting comparison in addition to the war stories about hacking their entire tool chain.

[1] https://gigaom.com/2015/01/26/facebooks-new-android-app-goes...

Re: iOS at Facebook [pdf]

#69

Post by pja »

buffoon wrote: post #58
Redoubts wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a job for Debian!

Debian was a complete dick on my old ppc g4. It sort of put me off. The was going to try FreeBSD but I have to persuade the wife to let me buy a g5 yet as they're large, noisy and entirely unnecessary. I just want one to play with and go ooh and aah and stuff :) I did the same with old SPARC kit a number of years ago too.

PPC Debian runs just fine on my old Mac Mini. I could replace the thing, but it just keeps chugging on.

Re: iOS at Facebook [pdf]

#70

Post by 0x4a42 »

zacblazic wrote: post #60
bjano wrote: post #39

So the main purpose of most of the 18000 classes is to make it possible for the app to scale up to 18000 classes? :)

Partly! The tools they mentioned (IDE, Mercurial) don't impact the app itself though. Which makes them irrelevant and doesn't factor into why their codebase is massive.

They are relevant if you take them for what they are: examples that explains, in a general way, why FB has large codebase. Because when something doesn't fits their needs they will write their own version.

So I guess with iOS they wrote/rewrote some part of the system functionnalities to better fit their needs.

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