Meta approves four programming languages for workers and developers
- Reference: 1658937609
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/07/27/meta_approves_four_programming_languages/
- Source link:
Among the favored four is Rust, the [1]much-loved systems language that emerged from Mozilla and is now overseen by the Rust Foundation.
In a blog post provided to The Register , the company explained that supporting a programming language is a decision not taken lightly.
[2]
"It’s important that every language we adopt is the best fit for a particular use case, so we do a high level of diligence whenever we evaluate a language," the company said. "Language decisions tend to stick once they’re made, so we want to be deliberate from the onset to give our engineers the best tools to work with."
[3]
[4]
For Meta, a supported language can be expected to provide internal and external developers with a positive experience in terms of code editing, debugging, builds, core libraries, and interoperability. And those writing code in a supported language are assured that they won't be asked to shift their code to a different language.
As might be expected, Meta has designated [5]homegrown , open sourced [6]Hack as a supported language. Hack is a typesafe variant of PHP that relies on the HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) and is the basis for much of Facebook. Meta recommends Hack for business logic and relatively stateless applications.
[7]
Python, one of the most popular programming languages around, also got the nod. Meta recommends Python for data science, ML applications, and Instagram-related code.
C++, the widely used general purpose programming language, received Meta's blessing for performance-sensitive backend services.
So too did Rust, also recommended for backend services focused on performance and for CLI tools. "There's a rapidly increasing Rust footprint in our products and services, and we're committing to Rust long term and welcome early adopters," the company said.
[8]
Meta's endorsement of Rust shouldn't come as a surprise given that the company has been [9]talking it up for several years.
[10]Meta's AI-based Wikipedia successor 'may be the next big break in NLP'
[11]Meta to squeeze money from WhatsApp with Cloud API for businesses
[12]Meta asks line managers to identify poorly performing staff for firing
[13]AI inventors may find it difficult to patent their tech under today's laws
Other programming languages are said to be "community supported," which means those using them are left to their own devices to ensure things work properly. Java, Erlang, Haskell, and Go, are endorsed for specific use cases, but aren't supported outside of those situations.
Rust, despite its reputation for being difficult to learn, has won favor over the past few years as a tool that allows developers to write memory safe code. It has seen adoption [14]at Microsoft , [15]at Google , and [16]among Linux kernel developers , not to mention [17]Apple , Amazon, and Dropbox.
Yet, memory safety may matter less to Meta in the near term than customer safety. A recent report titled "Taming the Hydra: Trust and Safety in the Metaverse," by consultancy [18]The Everest Group , argues that enterprises participating in virtual world interactions will need to up their trust and safety game to avoid abusive behavior directed at virtual world avatars, data privacy problems, digital asset fraud, and mental/physical health problems for content moderators.
Meta also has to demonstrate that there's a mass market business in virtual worlds that justifies the [19]$10 billion loss the company's Reality Labs unit posted last year. Now that Meta has partially frozen hiring and is [20]reportedly facing morale problems amid CEO Mark Zuckerberg's exhortations to move fast and take fewer breaks, what the company really needs is a revenue-safe language. ®
Get our [21]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/22/stackoverflow_survey/
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YuG1hX-755owHMr2Wu-y@AAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YuG1hX-755owHMr2Wu-y@AAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YuG1hX-755owHMr2Wu-y@AAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2014/03/21/facebook_hacks_out_php_alternative/
[6] https://hacklang.org/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YuG1hX-755owHMr2Wu-y@AAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YuG1hX-755owHMr2Wu-y@AAAAIM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://engineering.fb.com/2021/04/29/developer-tools/rust/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/11/meta_says_its_latest_ai/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/20/whatsapp_cloud_api/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/12/meta_sackings/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/09/ai_patent_feature_1/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/25/win32metadata/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/19/c_plus_plus_chromium_rust/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/23/linus_torvalds_rust_linux_kernel/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2020/05/15/rust_marks_five_years_since/
[18] https://www.everestgrp.com/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/meta_prototype_vr/
[20] https://www.theverge.com/23277797/mark-zuckerberg-meta-facebook-employees-pressure
[21] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Bash?
Bash, awk and sed have been good to me for thirty years. For most day-to-day tasks nothing can beat them.
Anyone with any sense will steer clear of this shit show!
Facebook's, sorry Meta's metaverse is just one of many metaverses and given Facebook's precious track record with user info how anyone could even so much has hand Facebook so much as their email address let alone anything useful, is beyond me. Metaverses are going to be numerous, every company will have one and none of them will talk to any of the others, meta-cells more like.
Now Saint Mark of Zuck has granted his papal blessing upon the chosen few coder langauges, oh how lowly we are that we heathens are coding in Golang or C#, the unblessed, the vile, we are not worthy. Zuck, take your language blessing and shove it up your metaverse, I shall prepare to be taken to the stake, light the faggots and I shall burn in the cleansing fires!
Metaverse and Zuck
All summed up in Mark Osborne's "More"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk
Raving aside
The tail of the article shows that Meta's attempted pivot isn't guaranteed to succeed. The cracks are clearly showing, as declining markets shine a bright light on the losse, er INVESTMENT, the company has been making. The leadership clearly lacks any grasp or vision of what they need to build, and the desperate posts offering position for people with a clue are going vacant. Their only hope at this point is acquiring someone that is on the right track, which it tricky when the person holding the check book clear hasn't a clue. Zuck can flog his team as hard as he want's but he's pointing them toward a random spot on the horizon. Whatever they are building will need to be scrapped at the end of the day.
The other question is will they tank the rest of the industries hopes along the way. That is a real peril for any acquired companies or teams to, look at how effectively they strangled Occulus. They wen't from market leader to pushing noting but cut rate garbage that required a Facebook login to use. Were it not for stumbles at HTC/Valve they would be out of the game entirely already. Now Zuck is slowing the tap of subsidized hardware, but the entire (and still small) market has to build to support the middle of the pack, so that means that everyone will have to be less aggressive in their designs to allow the low end Facehugger headsets to keep up.
Same for pushing a different vision for the core experiences. Suckerberg's vision won't fly, but if you are to different from it, you might loose out on a share of those sweet billions he's throwing around. So management and investors may see going your own way as unacceptably risky, leading to a lemming march into another industry death spiral. Legless videoconferencing and 90s inspired VR arcades aren't going to matter. Google was closer with Google earth, but their corporate culture ensured that never evolved in a direction that could have fueled a big bang moment for the industry.
So much justification
Meta's goal is to sell ad placement in a bot-curated view of freely submitted content. Really, they're just trying to make deployment and maintenance easier.
Bash?
I'm surprised that Bash isn't mentioned, even just "community supported". It's pretty handy for small tasks, and I'm unsure which of the others I would choose for that. (I suppose Python, but that would really slow me down, if I just need to move a bunch of files around, tar them up, scp them, things like that)
Having said that if "community supported" is anything like "community guidelines" then you could find yourself ejected from the building at any time, with no explanation given.