Meta developer tools: Working at scale

#1

Post by ot » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 10:24 AM UTC

Meta developer tools: Working at scale
engineering.fb.com

Re: Meta developer tools: Working at scale

#2

Post by arnon » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 12:26 PM UTC

Surprised to see them use Phabricator (I know it came out of there, but I basically already forgot it existed)

I used it briefly but couldn't get most people to adopt it widely enough.

Re: Meta developer tools: Working at scale

#3

Post by pdpi » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 12:34 PM UTC

arnon wrote: post #2

Surprised to see them use Phabricator (I know it came out of there, but I basically already forgot it existed) I used it briefly but couldn't get most people to adopt it widely enough.

Their internal Phabricator is quite different from the open source version. When I worked there (around 2017), it was definitely miles ahead of anything I'd used before. A lot of how it works is probably... controversial, I guess, but it suited my mental model quite well.

Re: Meta developer tools: Working at scale

#4

Post by blitz_skull » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 12:44 PM UTC

Sapling looks quite cool! I've used git extensively in my career and consider myself as having a slightly-more-advanced-than-typical understanding of how to use it just based on conversations with colleagues. However, one thing that's always been very limiting with git has been stack-based PR reviews, and as they mentioned amending deep commits. It's not impossible, but it makes it awkward enough that I usually avoid it if possible.

Curious if anyone has used Sapling after lots of time using git. Is it the future?

Re: Meta developer tools: Working at scale

#5

Post by goodoldneon » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 12:45 PM UTC

arnon wrote: post #2

Surprised to see them use Phabricator (I know it came out of there, but I basically already forgot it existed) I used it briefly but couldn't get most people to adopt it widely enough.

I used Phabricator at a previous (non-Meta) company. It was better than GitHub in some ways but worse in others. Overall I didn’t mind it

Re: Meta developer tools: Working at scale

#6

Post by mrweasel » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

Someone is going to read this and start to retooling their five person developer organisation because: "Facebook uses it".

It's funny that the Sapling command is "sl", that's going to conflict with installations of "stream locomotive".

Re: Meta developer tools: Working at scale

#7

Post by say_it_as_it_is » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 1:10 PM UTC

How many engineers did Meta lay off in the last 12 months? Is there a developer tool for laying off developers?

Re: Meta developer tools: Working at scale

#8

Post by seagullriffic » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

arnon wrote: post #2

Surprised to see them use Phabricator (I know it came out of there, but I basically already forgot it existed) I used it briefly but couldn't get most people to adopt it widely enough.

I wonder whether they'll continue using their in-house Phrabricator or choose to support Phorge (https://we.phorge.it/) now that open-source Phabricator is no longer supported.

Re: Meta developer tools: Working at scale

#9

Post by ink_13 » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

blitz_skull wrote: post #4

Sapling looks quite cool! I've used git extensively in my career and consider myself as having a slightly-more-advanced-than-typical understanding of how to use it just based on conversations with colleagues. However, one thing that's always been very limiting with git has been stack-based PR reviews, and as they mentioned amending deep commits. It's not impossible, but it makes it awkward enough that I usually avoid…

Probably not, if only for reasons of inertia. Git plus third-party review tools (like GitHub) is more than "good enough" for most purposes.

I used to work at FB, and while sapling is quite nice to use in practice, without the internal version of Phabricator to do code review (and, in all likelihood, mononoke), I don't think I'd pick it up again.

Re: Meta developer tools: Working at scale

#10

Post by throwaway1777 » Wed, Jun 28, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #7

How many engineers did Meta lay off in the last 12 months? Is there a developer tool for laying off developers?

Fewer than some other companies. More than some others. But yeah, there are internal tools for layoffs. How else would you turn off access to hundreds of laptops at once?