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The only reason this is considered impressive is because so many other services have set the bar so low. This isn't rocket science, it just requires thinking a

by keating 18y ago

The only reason this is considered impressive is because so many other services have set the bar so low. This isn't rocket science, it just requires thinking ahead and designing for scale.

neilk 18y ago
What you would call rocket science? This is pretty impressive. Erlang does a lot of the heavy lifting but even if it did everything out of the box (and it didn't), gluing it all together is no small feat.
- keating 18y ago
  A chat server? Yawn. And it's not for 70 million people at once, that's user base, not simultaneous logins. AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, GroupWise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, SameTime, XMPP, Yahoo, this is a solved problem.
  - aston 18y ago
    Not to mention many of those services do have 70 million people on at once.
  - ggrot 18y ago
    Agreed. I find it ironic since a piece like this is likely written at least partially in an effort to attract programmers to facebook. To me it reads: "Come work for facebook and re-invent online chat. Again." Now, if the article had been about how they pushed the state of the art, I would be pretty interested, but none of this not new technology. As for the dark launch thing, it is a fancy trick, but there are ways of doing load testing in an automated system by having test servers simulate the load from real users. This usually can give you much better data without wasting bandwidth, slowing down users' experiences, etc.
  - posborne 18y ago
    Yes, it has been done before... But I don't think it has been done in an environment where you need to scale up quickly. They had a problem, they solved it in a very cool fashion using the best tool for the job (Erlang), they thought of a very good way of testing the application, and they were gracious enough to share their experiences with us, other developers... Seems like a win all around, so I'm not going to complain.

by keating 18y ago

The only reason this is considered impressive is because so many other services have set the bar so low. This isn't rocket science, it just requires thinking ahead and designing for scale.

neilk 18y ago

What you would call rocket science? This is pretty impressive. Erlang does a lot of the heavy lifting but even if it did everything out of the box (and it didn't), gluing it all together is no small feat.

keating 18y ago
A chat server? Yawn. And it's not for 70 million people at once, that's user base, not simultaneous logins. AIM, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, GroupWise, ICQ, IRC, MSN, QQ, SILC, SIMPLE, SameTime, XMPP, Yahoo, this is a solved problem.
- aston 18y ago
  Not to mention many of those services do have 70 million people on at once.
- ggrot 18y ago
  Agreed. I find it ironic since a piece like this is likely written at least partially in an effort to attract programmers to facebook. To me it reads: "Come work for facebook and re-invent online chat. Again." Now, if the article had been about how they pushed the state of the art, I would be pretty interested, but none of this not new technology. As for the dark launch thing, it is a fancy trick, but there are ways of doing load testing in an automated system by having test servers simulate the load from real users. This usually can give you much better data without wasting bandwidth, slowing down users' experiences, etc.
- posborne 18y ago
  Yes, it has been done before... But I don't think it has been done in an environment where you need to scale up quickly. They had a problem, they solved it in a very cool fashion using the best tool for the job (Erlang), they thought of a very good way of testing the application, and they were gracious enough to share their experiences with us, other developers... Seems like a win all around, so I'm not going to complain.