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

4 points by natgordon ↗ HN
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

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japherwocky
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...

zalew
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-...

pinchyfingers
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.

stratospark
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.

jchonphoenix
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.

smarterch1ld
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.

drallison
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++.