
Ask HN: Why doesn't Facebook sell developer tools? - kva
Facebook has been at the forefront of developer tooling for a long time with React, React-Native, GraphQL etc... is there a reason Facebook can&#x27;t have their own version of AWS that provides managed solutions for tooling?
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jamesmishra
I hate to speculate, given that I don't have individual insight about
Facebook. However, I did work on developer-facing products at Uber and learned
a bit about what it takes for such a product to succeed or fail.

Ultimately, the success of AWS-like developer tools depends almost entirely on
executive buy-in--maybe even more so than product-market fit. Amazon is unique
in the the executives at the top clearly believe in giving AWS everything it
needs to succeed. Other companies are often run by executives either don't
believe in the business value of developer tools or they're unwilling to
commit the resources for any developer-facing product to succeed.

Facebook is an interesting example in that they open-source such great
technology even purchased
[https://parseplatform.org/](https://parseplatform.org/) in 2013, but they
shut down and open-sourced Parse a few years later. I'm guessing that the
execs at the top didn't feel that the business value of Parse was worth the
ops burden.

A few years ago, Steve Yegge wrote about the differences between Amazon and
Google in how they thought about developer platforms[1]. A lot has changed
since then--Google+ is no more and Google Cloud is a much bigger business, but
Yegge's post describes a dilemma that all consumer-facing companies have.

[1]:
[https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611](https://gist.github.com/chitchcock/1281611)

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wallflower
They did. They bought a great mobile backend called Parse and shut it down.
Some of us who had to deal with it still have bad memories.

> Parse was a mobile backend as a service platform originally developed by the
> provider Parse, Inc. The company was acquired by Facebook in 2013 and shut
> down in January 2017.[1][2] Following the announcement in 2016 of the
> impending shutdown, the platform was subsequently open sourced.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parse_(platform)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parse_\(platform\))

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logicslave
haha do you have any idea about running something like AWS? Google who is the
king of distributed systems and cloud cannot hold a candle to the operational
efficiency of AWS. AWS isnt only great because of the technology, its the
dedication to keep that behemoth running reliably at all costs.

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fiftyacorn
I'd agree with this. Aws is not only selling the services it also has to
maintain a large amount of capital intensive data centers

Facebook can tick asking nicely selling data and access to it's customers

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duxup
"Be AWS" would mean a huge investment, and even for Facebook competing with
AWS could be a huge challenge.

Facebook is not AWS and being AWS isn't what most their people and management
are good at.

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vilog1
It's not their core company goal. They are known for ruthlessly focusing

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PaulHoule
Security?

My son and I were wargaming threats against cloud data centers. Assuming that
modern cloud data centers are all multi-building affairs connected with
something akin to the 1990's mainframe FICON it is hard to make an impact with
conventional weapons, even cluster bombs. Maybe a B-52 can drop a stick each
on two buildings and wreck everything.

If Skynet lights up in us-east-1 even Minuteman is not good enough, you're
going to need a lot of warheads just to take down a zone. You'd be wishing
they didn't cancel MX.

Colocation could make a big difference in extreme scenarios of social
disorder.

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notdang
do you have access to GPT-3?

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PaulHoule
don't need it. I failed the Turing test in Kindergarten, graduated from
Elementary school the same way Ender Wiggin did and I like bugs better than
people today. ;-)

We are working on a game like Advance Wars but where you can have Spain fight
Portugal or something like that.

