Comment by ipozgaj
14 hours ago
> These people have arguably contributed nothing to society for over a decade
React, React Native, GraphQL, LLama, PyTorch, RocksDB, Cassandra, folly, Hack, HHVM, OCP, Presto, btrfs, cgroupsv2/PSI, eBPF, zstd, roughly 12% of all Linux kernel contributions are signed off by Meta + Meta is the 5th biggest contributor to Linux kernel.
Also a ton of other projects that did not originally come out of Meta but get a ton of patches and support/funding: MySQL, Memcached, Hadoop, LLVM, Systemd, Rust, Python etc.
Perhaps research a bit more before you make these ignorant comments.
I can take a brief look at the social damage meta has done and say that, to me, none of those contributions are worth the pain that they have caused.
From the messed up self-image issues they instill on children to the hand they played - either intentionally or through pure ignorance - in ethnic cleansing, I couldn't care less about what they've done in the tech space when those commits are signed in blood.
That's fine, but the original question asked why people respect devs who work at Meta given they haven't contributed anything. (It didn't explicitly say devs, but when meta employees are getting respect around here, that's who's being discussed.) Your parent reply demonstrated that they have in fact contributed a lot, so there are obviously some accomplished developers working there.
It's certainly possible to see the company as a net negative for society while also recognizing those contributions. One could even argue that that could simultaneously be the case, while the net effects of some particular devs working there are positive (though I could imagine reasonable arguments on both sides of that one).
Contributed anything to society. I doubt anyone in my local community is going to know or care what any of those libraries, frameworks, etc are.
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Zstd is worth a lot of other's people's pain.
My subtle point is that there are a lot of real reasons to dislike Meta. No reason to have hate blind you..
> Zstd is worth a lot of other's people's pain.
"Amnesty report finds Facebook amplified hate ahead of Rohingya massacre in Myanmar":
* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/amnesty-report-finds-face...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide#Facebook_con...
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Thanks for mentioning that. It reinforces my desire to avoid zstd because of its connection to Facebook.
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"Zstd is worth a lot of other's people's pain." in response to a post about how Facebook helped enable ethnic cleansing makes you look sociopathic. You just said "this tech is worth the deaths of thousands!!!!"
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Some of the mentioned projects started outside Meta and probably we'd get them anyway without them. Maybe later, maybe in different shape.
I have no respect for React, React Native and GraphQL. They are all horrible and don't solve actual problems. They aren't even the best tools to accomplish what they're trying to accomplish.
I don't know anything about the other things so I can't say if they are good or not. But acting as if react is some big invention is crazy. bell Labs gave us Unix and C. Meta isn't even close to inventing something like that.
> and don't solve actual problems
You can have a lot of beef with react, but this is the lamest one. Of course it solves many problems, that's why it landed at the top. It took the C out of MVC, it made view rendering deterministic and simplified event management. It also stayed somewhat stable on the API side over the years.
I’m not a fan of React at all, but React Native got me out of a jam when I had to build identical apps for AppleTV and Android/Amazon TV.
I will invert these: These are IMO not great software, but software that have name recognition because they were built and marketed by a giant company.
Some of that tech was developed over ten years ago
It's neat that I can now put an OCP NIC in a bog-standard server from the major players but I'm not sure that makes up for how everything else OCP becomes e-waste much faster than regular EIA-310 gear.
I would trade React for a world without Facebook any day of the week.
you can... just... not use it
Tastes better, more filling
I don't get why people say Oppenheimer was a talented scientist when I don't want nuclear weapons to exist
Some of them might be trying to justify the things they do at their day jobs that make the world worse.
I can acknowledge that someone is intelligent, skilled, or talented without respecting them or their decision to apply their intelligence, skills, or talent to an ignoble cause.
How have any of those made the world inhabited by humans in any way better?
zstd is pretty good, but not so much better than the alternatives to justify any of Meta's harms. I like btrfs because it makes my backups simpler and faster, but I don't need it, and I'd happily go back to ext4 to be rid of Meta.
The Nazis pushed for anti smoking policies.
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Yawn, I've used none of these except Linux and I would expect that their Linux contributions have been self-serving and not made it better for regular users like me.
I mean, Hack? Who cares?
You use more than half of those on a daily basis just by using any piece of modern electronics or connecting to the internet.
I also "use" Facebook tracking and ads and I'm not psyched about that either!
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Is your sole measure of value whether you personally use a thing?
i really can't believe what i'm reading, on a tech/science site from all places
Yes, you've never used a React website in your life or downloaded something with zstd despite them being defaults on the internet.