> Despite the apparent advantages of reusing Instagram's platform for Threads (much faster delivery time), Malkani admitted the company introduced a substantial amount of technical debt that must be addressed in the future.
This is not the feel-good "ye olde ways are always better" post that the headline suggests. This is a quick-and-dirty ship it by tomorrow™ and we will worry about building it properly later.
This strikes me as funny: what could "properly" mean to an industry if a successfully launched and operational piece of software serving clients globally somehow doesn't meet the requirements.
I think this talk of "proper" is just purism, its not grounded in reality or sound engineering practices.
The article should be lauded as kicking off a new era of practical engineering that rejects software purism.
It's a live service. If it "serves clients globally" with the minimal basic functionality at launch, then that's a valid launch. But that's achieved by being a mess under the hood ("technical debt"-like stuff), it probably is expensive to operate, hard and brittle to maintain, and very difficult and slow to extend and expand.
That hardly meets all the requirements of a global and ambitious live service that has to move fast to gain traction against established, experienced and aggressive competitors.
It's a valid tradeoff and a successful launch, but it's ok to say it's "not properly built" for what comes next.
One of the requirements could be maintainability, and the fact that is launched and operational and serving clients globally tells you nothing about that.
You're basically arguing there is no such thing as tech debt, if a software works, then there can be nothing wrong with it. I would think this is obviously false.
This infoq.com article about a pile of apparently hastily built technical debt is going to “kick off a new era of practical engineering” where everyone “rejects software purism”?
They are not selling shrink-wrapped software. “Operational” is a moving, evolving target.
Meta were executing on sudden nascent demand for a well managed microblogging platform in the wake of Twitter's buyout. A 5 month copy/paste of one of their existing platforms was absolutely "building it properly" in that context.
They could have definitely spent 12-24 months building the platform diligently from naught, but they'd have the same end product, just 12 months too late. The demand could have been satisfied by any one of several players in the industry (Tiktok, bluesky, LinkedIn, Twitter itself, Snapchat, a resurrected MySpace, etc), so rushing to gain first-mover advantage was likely the singular consideration for the project.
If fixing technical debt after the fact costs more than 10months of operating. You have a problem. Not counting the extra hours needed to maintain an archaic codebase. This was more about the uncertainty of threads succeeding. It’s easier to swallow writing off a port than a brand new implementation.
They profited of it? Bold statement considering it is a meta product. I would be extremely surprised if they have achieved even a single dollar of profit.
This is not the feel-good "ye olde ways are always better" post that the headline suggests. This is a quick-and-dirty ship it by tomorrow™ and we will worry about building it properly later.