Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in?

Posted by natgordon on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @10:32PM
from the ask-hn dept.

Facebook was originally written in PHP. What technologies is it using now?

I had someone tell me that they were moving from python/django to php because 1. it's easier to find PHP devs and 2. it's good enough for facebook. Is it?

( 11 comments | 4 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by pinchyfingers on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @10:50PM (#1473717)

Really?!

They developed Hip Hop to transform PHP into C++, so I'd bet they are firmly dedicated to PHP, and I really doubt that Facebook has any problems finding developers.

PHP/C++, Cassandra, JavaScript, Flash, and whatever third party developers choose to use as long as they use the Facebook API.

I don't actually know, maybe someone else will give you some more insight, but I'm pretty confident about the PHP part.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by japherwocky on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @10:49PM (#1473715)

It's always been written in PHP, and they released a compiler for the language that they developed in house:

http://www.insidefacebook.com/2010/02/02/facebook-open-sourc...

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Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by zalew on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @11:21PM (#1473780)

and MySQL http://www.facebook.com/MySQLatFacebook

http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7899307130

More interesting are how they use technologies rather than only which one, f.ex this: http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/02/facebook-makes-their-web-...

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Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by badave on Wednesday June 30, 2010 @02:21AM (#1474056)

Don't forget about Cassandra, which they developed just for scalability issues that they were having, and is now used at Digg and other sites (I think reddit uses it for something as well now) http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=24413138919

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Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by stratospark on Wednesday June 30, 2010 @01:17AM (#1473967)

Facebook developed the Thrift API to facilitate cross-language services: http://incubator.apache.org/thrift/

I imagine they could use anything as long as it consumes Thrift. The extent to which they do that is a question.

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Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by drallison on Wednesday June 30, 2010 @02:44PM (#1475744)

Take a look at the EE380 video for May 5, 2010 at http://ee380.stanford.edu. Haiping Zhao from Facebook describes the HipHop Compiler for PHP: Transforming PHP into C++.

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Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by smarterch1ld on Wednesday June 30, 2010 @01:31AM (#1473992)

It's easier to find PHP devs.

Facebook is written in PHP. They crossed the point where switching made any sense a long time ago.

This has absolutely nothing to with what you should use.

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Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by jchonphoenix on Wednesday June 30, 2010 @01:22AM (#1473976)

From people on the inside.

Its written in PHP mainly. It has Java, C++, C, Haskell, Erlang, Python, Perl, OCaml and some others littered throughout the site.

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Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by waterlesscloud on Tuesday June 29, 2010 @11:11PM (#1473764)

Isn't the chat subsystem in Erlang?

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Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by stratospark on Wednesday June 30, 2010 @01:20AM (#1473973)

There are some good slides about this:

http://www.erlang-factory.com/conference/SFBayAreaErlangFact...

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Re:Ask HN: What language(s) is Facebook written in? by aitoehigie on Wednesday June 30, 2010 @12:29AM (#1473913)

yes it is

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