Meta Tech Podcast 69: To type or not to type — measuring productivity impact with DAT
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Nov 29, 2024 Discover the intriguing debate on whether typing more enhances productivity or just adds to the workload. The discussion dives into Diff Authoring Time (DAT) as a fresh productivity metric and explores the evolution of the Hack programming language. Learn about the challenges of implementing incremental type checking in large codebases and the importance of developer experience. The hosts also highlight a groundbreaking experiment using typed mocking that led to significant time savings. Get insights on data-driven decision-making in developer infrastructure!
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Hack's Origin
- Hack, Meta's programming language, originated from PHP to address scaling challenges.
- Facebook's growth and the limitations of PHP prompted the development of Hack's type system.
Hack's Architecture for Speed
- Hack's architecture uses pre-computation and distributed type checking to maintain speed.
- This allows for fast feedback, even with millions of lines of code, which is crucial for developer productivity.
First Hack Experience
- New Meta engineers famously modify a webpage as their first task, similar to early PHP development.
- The ability to maintain speed with Hack's architecture, even at scale, is impressive.