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The Computer Science Behind Facebook's 1 Billion Users

Posted by timothy on from the yet-they-keep-most-recent-instead-of-top-stories dept.

pacopico writes "Much has been made about Facebook hitting 1 billion users. But Businessweek has the inside story detailing how the site actually copes with this many people and the software Facebook has invented that pushes the limits of computer science. The story quotes database guru Mike Stonebraker saying, 'I think Facebook has the hardest information technology problem on the planet.' To keep Facebooking moving fast, Mark Zuckerberg apparently instituted a program called Boot Camp in which engineers spend six-weeks learning every bit of Facebook's code."

7 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Oh bullshit. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The story quotes database guru Mike Stonebraker saying, 'I think Facebook has the hardest information technology problem on the planet.'

    Really? You think keeping track of some people's dinner plans is the hardest IT problem on the planet? How about YouTube storing and serving truly ludicrous amounts of video. Web search? Watson?

    Facebook is utterly trivial compared to many problems out there.

    1. Re:Oh bullshit. by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You think so? One person in six on this earth, including infants and the elderly in developing countries without regular internet access has an active facebook account do they? Facebook's numbers have never been properly audited, its not in their best interests to do so. The more users they can claim, the better for them. I would agree with possibly a couple hundred million, but I have a really hard time believing much more than that.

  2. PHP by Coolhand2120 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Oh yes, please tell me all about the computer geniuses that wrote the PHP scripts that power facebook!

    1. Re:PHP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yea. Because everyone knows no real website could possibly be written in structured, maintainable PHP. Well, except the biggest site on the Internet.

    2. Re:PHP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      PHP has proven to be the best web development kit. It's only persistent failure is the legacy growth of inconsistent api calls. For the rest, it's turing complete, does scale well, and most of all is the best tuned hammer for the job. It delivers.

      In effect, PHP is a huge C api with its own C like language constructs, a layer of abstraction which takes away the mundane and gets you building web sites.

      Now C is hailed for its great power, and not made fun of because of its ability to make real crappy, insecure code.
      PHP however is not hailed for its great power, and made fun of because of its ability to make real crappy, insecure code.

      It's all a matter of perspective. The problem is low level programmers who can't live with the fact people make a billion dollar without obsessing over pointers or garbage collection.

  3. Re:1 billion users by L3370 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If he can make 4, so can the bozo that wants to create a fake account to for your pets, browsing ex girlfriends, gaming Farmville perks, and avoiding your boss' prying eyes.

    In short, there aren't a billion people on facebook--nowhere near it. An important fact for businesses that are looking to tap into a network of "real" people.

  4. Re:Your first mistake... by Pseudonym · · Score: 3, Insightful

    At the risk of stating the obvious, an information technology problem is not the same as a computer science problem.

    --
    sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});