What is Digg?49 Comments
- posure, on 10/12/2007, -0/+58Why don't you just go make MySpace suck more instead...Facebook is great the way it is.
- lifeandtimes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+34Facebook is basically college student crack. They've done what myspace tried to do in a clean (mostly) interface for college students, and recently for anyone who would like an account.
One of the big reasons I like Facebook is because the developers try to give back to the Facebook community, which is the point of this Digg article. They have been providing an API for people to build things that interface with Facebook, and now they release something like Thrift. It would be nice if all website developers were like the developers of Facebook. Though...its more likely the owners of the websites would have to be like this, and not so much the developers. - tonyr1988, on 10/12/2007, -0/+25"front end where you could create your own themes would be nice."
Do you mean create a theme that YOU see when YOU browse through the Facebook site? That would be cool, and completely unobstrusive to others.
Or do you mean create a theme for your page for everyone to see? If you do, I don't even know where to begin...anything more advanced than "pick from these x preset palettes" would be completely disastrous. - hijinks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20myspace sent the web back 10 years to the days of geocities and people loading animated gifs and midi files.
- hydrophobic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16The great thing about the Facebook interface IS its rigidity. If I wanted flashing pink I'd go to MySpace but at Facebook I find what I'm looking for in the same place. IMHO the interface is well designed and the fixed structure allows user creativity to show in the content (I'm a big fan of function over form), making for a much more interactive community.
- SirNuke, on 10/12/2007, -3/+19@fkr3
Thrift allows developers to seamlessly share data between programs written in different languages. The .NET framework compiles various .NET languages into the roughly the same cross platform .NET assembly. Note that .NET does not support any of Thrift's supported languages (or Thrift's POSIX platform).
Thift's goal is to allow developers to write various parts of an overall program in the language best suited for that function. For example, take advantage of the speed of C++ for the core functions, but utilize Ruby on Rails for the html output. Use Ruby on Rails to parse the url/params and determine what page is requested, and use C++ for the actual data parsing/retrieval. - xabstract, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14In best Peter Griffin voice-
"Thank you Facebook, you get a lollipop treat. Myspace, No! No!...You sit in the corner." - lifeandtimes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9I have to agree with posure as far as user defined themes. I'm not disagreeing because I think it is wrong to want your own theme, that is perfectly fine. As a web developer, I disagree because, unfortunately, web developers cannot trust user input. A fully customizable theme would allow elements that hackers would easily take advantage of... i.e. MySpace's security problems are rampant.
- headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Took a quick look through the (light) docs, and some samples. This is really cool if you need to get a few different languages talking to each other without much effort.
- gremlinchief, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Ugh, no delete buttons.
- YuriSakazaki, on 10/12/2007, -8/+15Out of curiosity, is this the software that Facebook uses for its site? If so, it's pretty impressive.
- vicaya, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5It's a demonstration to show that they have a good team and that hopefully it'll attract more smart people to join them.
But based on what I've seen so far (whitepaper and some code), in terms of scope, feature and likely performance, I think ZeroC's Ice (no affiliation) would be a more mature and versatile (2 more language bindings; slice is a better IDL) alternative. - Saffa, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5The description on their site says:
"Thrift allows you to define data types and service interfaces in a simple definition file. Taking that file as input, the compiler generates code that can be used to easily build RPC clients and servers that communicate seamlessly across programming languages."
Am I going crazy here or does this sound exactly like SOAP?
1.) "define data types and service interfaces in a simple definition file" - WSDL
2.) "Taking that file as input, the compiler generates code" - There are proxy code generators for most popular languages that will generate code based on a WSDL.
Not trying to bash their product, I'm sure it's good, but isn't this just re-inventing the wheel? - sonofagunn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4SOAP web services are great for simple data exchange, not so great for more complex or high-performance distributed applications. That's the simple answer.
But this is still reinventing the wheel. CORBA and ICE are two examples that sound similar to Thrift. But Thrift must be better in some certain situation or it never would have been written, so more options are a good thing in this case. - koreth, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Yeah, the Thrift web page says it's used for search, among other things.
- connieLingus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3this is really some very awesome software...I read through the white-paper and was very impressed with the level of detail and research these guys have put into this package. I think that the most impressive thing, however, is the fact that they were willing to OS it, and thus give such advanced technology to their potential competitors. It's probably not for everyone (how many of you are working on multi-language projects?), but its a very feature-rich implementation of cross-platform coding.
10 years ago, this sort of technology would have been bundled and sold for mega-bucks, now its just given away...congrats, Facebook dudes, for your forward thinking! - TSCheredar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Just manually delete everything on your profile and then cancel the account. Problem solved.
- Raluph, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Of course, everybody knows that Facebook is just a vast information collection entity working for the NSA, right? When they know who your girlfriend is and what flavor of icecream you like they will be able to twist you to their will... MUHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!
- arnar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I agree with Icaya - this looks an awful lot like a simplifed version of Ice.
- p3ngu1n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Je t'adore doesn't mean 'I love you'. It's Je t'aime.
- fkr3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It would definitely come down to the owners of the sites. Most people who have that say are somewhat removed from the actual coding.
API's are growing in popularity but they take a fair amount of skill on the developers side to pull them off correctly and most devs/apis are quite suckful (eg digg's half-arsed effort). - reclusivemonkey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I did. It still doesn't answer my question of why I can't delete my account. That seems to be a negative issue with diggers it seems.
- cruxop, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The main reason I would use this instead of ICE is that ICE is GPL if you want to get it free. If you don't... then they'll require x% of your operating budget, an arm, a leg, and the blood of your first born child just like freaking Oracle.
Thrift is Free. Read the Thrift License, its functionally equivalent to the MIT license. - lifeandtimes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@fkr3
I think site owners obviously have a big part to do with not wanting their site specific details released through some sort of free use license. At the same time, I'm sure there are web design companies out there that use in house website frameworks to make client sites that would prefer not to release code/APIs to the general public. Of course, I guess it would also depend on the license the company released the API for their framework under, and how friendly the company was towards open source software. - sonofagunn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@fkr - XML web services are too bloated for high performance distributed applications. They work great for simple data exchange because they are standards based and anybody can use them.
There are other solutions out there already like this. CORBA is the oldest and most mature. A lot of people think it's too complicated. I disagree, but whatever.
ICE is a newer one that attempts to "redo" CORBA in a simpler and better fashion.
Thrift sounds like a homegrown version of CORBA or ICE, not XML/SOAP. I'd like to hear why I should use it over CORBA or ICE though. - lucidmoon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oui, and Ich liebe dich aint all _that_ bad
- fkr3, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4@ SirNuke
Good description, but that brings me to another question. Formats like XML, CSV etc, and of course databases and web services also allow data to be seamlessly shared between languages. So again, what does Thrift bring to the table? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Mostly for the same reason there are thousands of brands and types of wheels (okay, tires) out there. Each one is optimized to specific needs. Facebook's technical needs are relatively extreme, so a custom solution has its benefits.
- hydrophobic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'd love to look at MySpace, I really would, but I just don't want to take the risk with epilepsy...
- cruxop, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Dig is not a help desk.
- Trenton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Mirror? =S
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Very interesting
"Building an in-memory search index in PHP"
dude... I don't know if it's impossible or not but now they are giving this kind of goods away, I have to check it out even I hate facebook. - ryandoom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well why does facebook really need this? They wrote their own web application from the ground up, why do they need to have a system to convert similar code to a bunch of different platforms? They determine their own platform and tech. Is it because if they need something extremely performant they can hack up some PHP to then generate the C code for it? It's just a bit odd... I would assume they could get everything done with just PHP and C++, no need for Python, Ruby and those other guys ;)
- crossers, on 07/18/2008, -0/+0Ruluph: what? NSA? not of course! you can say the same for all sites like facebook. and from were they know who is she your girlfriend?
http://www.shpe-sac.org
http://www.ocflex.com/
http://www.trgovinca.org
http://www.chasr.org/ - Sparkster185, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Dug you up simply because you didn't commit comment abuse. Thank you.
- reclusivemonkey, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2I wish Facebook would release my profile. Please tell me why I can't delete it?
- avi123, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1ah!, i found an error on facebook...the share button doesn't work. :)
I finally found an error on facebook, its about time. - drjekelmrhyde, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Funny I seen a Facebook tv ad today about a new network or program I'll find a link in a few
- Pottersquash, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1What really is the point of this? Anyone who wants cross-language interopability goes directly to the .NET Framework. Why would you muck around with Thrift when the .NET Framework is 10 years mature and probably many dozens of times bigger / more versatile?
I'm not attacking Thrift, just curious as to why anyone would bother with it?"
Cause its something new and you haven't used it before. Sometimes you have to break from norm and do something a lil diff even if its not as good just to see - fkr3, on 10/12/2007, -20/+15What really is the point of this? Anyone who wants cross-language interopability goes directly to the .NET Framework. Why would you muck around with Thrift when the .NET Framework is 10 years mature and probably many dozens of times bigger / more versatile?
I'm not attacking Thrift, just curious as to why anyone would bother with it? - Archon810, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2No Perl support :(
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -9/+3***** facebook
- vemerge, on 10/12/2007, -15/+9Fully customizable Facebook would suck balls. Like you do on Sunday evenings. Go suck balls.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1The bset bit about MySpace is flashing pink and marquees.
If you don't get it then your mising the point and the fun.
Lighten up for god sakes - quomen, on 10/12/2007, -15/+2Facebook rockets.
- avonwodahs, on 10/12/2007, -28/+8When did they take that picture? the seventies?
- internetslacker, on 10/12/2007, -43/+1It would be nice to see someone come up with a more elegant front-end to the whole Facebook site IMHO. It just seems a bit too... boring. Facebook is great, I agree... but a fully customisable front end where you could create your own themes would be nice.
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