
PHP Rewritten by Facebook - TheTribster
http://www.tastethecloud.com/content/php-rewritten-facebook
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ledart
The Author here, sorry my post wasn't clear. I threw that together in about 15
minutes not thinking much about it. Some code had to change given that the
recompile was done in c#, that was my understanding. I've done some follow up
and yes, some core PHP code was rewritten. AOL was perfectly positioned then
they blew it, big time, but the TW acquisition was certain to do that. Google,
AOL, Facebook are all trying to be our primary portal. They want us to consume
as much of the internet through their services as possible, obviously. You
could argue that Google has replaced AOL in that regard. I thought I was clear
that the cost benefit and the decrease in server costs would be a big benefit
to them doing this. I never said or thought that had all their developers
working on this, but as daily FB user its clear they are not working on new
features or extending their framework. I didn't realize that speed problems
were that substantial, I've never heard anyone complain about FB page load
times. I think they did this as way to control costs primarily by reducing
servers. I see FB as being just another stepping stone like MySpace anf
Friendster and others. Apple is perfectly positioned to walk into the social
space by simply extending their current properties like iTunes and the
AppStore. How will FB compete with that? I don't know but they'll sure have a
really fast version of PHP.

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CWIZO
It's clear that the author doesn't know what he is talking about. He is
argumenting as if the whole FB dev team would drop everything and only be
working on HipHop, when we all know it was 2 or 3 guys that did it. And even
if that was the case, if your web page is not working due to performance
reasons, you won't gain anything by ignoring that and developing new features.
Fix the performance first, then bother with cool new stuff for users to play
with.

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invisible
The author forgets that speed for huge, huge, huge sites is a very important
factor for those that visit Facebook. If the first few pages load slowly for
even one person, that may be them missing out on 3 more users/viewers (via
word-of-mouth).

And they're not "rewriting" PHP. They are improving the speed of it by
compiling it to a lower level. This is just citing HipHop as far as I can
tell.

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yalurker
FTA: "Why wouldn't they be working to allow users to experience the entire
Internet through a Facebook portal?"

Is he suggesting that the future of Facebook is to become what AOL was in the
90s?

