Ask HN: Any Facebook engineer here I have a question:)
was building facebook with PHP considered a mistake ? (no hate for php it is just a question)
3 comments
Disclaimer: I spent a year at Facebook as a production engineer.
I wonder if you're familiar with the Hack programming language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_(programming_language)), which was developed by Facebook as an extension of PHP that addresses some of the issues that Facebook had with PHP as the company scaled from its beginnings as a social network for college students to a colossal network.
I personally believe implementing a multi-billion dollar enterprise on the foundation of PHP code isn't a mistake. Even if there's a lot of tech debt, there's a ton of money to pay off that debt, and then some. Most of us dream of having that type of problem.
I wonder if you're familiar with the Hack programming language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_(programming_language)), which was developed by Facebook as an extension of PHP that addresses some of the issues that Facebook had with PHP as the company scaled from its beginnings as a social network for college students to a colossal network.
I personally believe implementing a multi-billion dollar enterprise on the foundation of PHP code isn't a mistake. Even if there's a lot of tech debt, there's a ton of money to pay off that debt, and then some. Most of us dream of having that type of problem.
If Facebook were built today, what would be the primary language used for the backend?