Meta Tech Podcast

48: A 94% reduction for basic video compute time on Instagram Jan 25, 2023

Ryan and his team found a quick way of reducing the compute resources spent on encoding videos for Instagram by 94%, but that was actually the easy part. Tune in to learn what the fix was and how you roll out changes that can affect the user experience of billions of users.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy and https://mastodon.social/@passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Reducing Instagram’s basic video compute time by 94 percent - Meta Engineering Blog: https://engineering.fb.com/2022/11/04/video-engineering/instagram-video-processing-encoding-reduction/
The Diff: https://thediffpodcast.com/
Unix Signals in Production - Dangers and Pitfalls: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2022/09/27/signals-in-prod-dangers-and-pitfalls/
Introducing Velox: An open source unified execution engine - https://engineering.fb.com/2022/08/31/open-source/velox/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Intro Ryan 1:40
Transcoding Video at Instagram 2:52
Codecs and Tradeoffs 5:33
Client Support 7:13
Where did the compute go? 9:15
ABR 10:59
Progressive/Non-ABR Encodings 12:31
Saving Encoding Time 13:10
Testing the Changes 17:39
Results 26:43
Popularity Predictions 28:32
Outro 36:31

47: Sapling - A scalable, user-friendly source control system Dec 24, 2022

Confused by the syntax of git’s rebase command? Overwhelmed with branch management? Check out Meta’s new git-compatible source control management system Sapling. Durham and Michael, two of the architects behind the recent open-source release, join Pascal on the podcast to discuss their plans for the project, how it was possible to extract one small part of Meta’s large SCM codebase and what the differences between Sapling, git and Mercurial are.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy and https://mastodon.social/@passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Sapling: https://sapling-scm.com/
Review Stack: https://reviewstack.dev/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Durham and Michael Intro 1:18
What is Sapling? 2:56
git Compatibility 3:48
What's Available Today? 5:28
Sapling vs git 7:28
Branching Models 10:20
Stacks 13:09
Stacks and GitHub 17:28
Scaling Sapling 22:25
Extracting Sapling for Open Source 29:32
What's Next for Sapling 34:22
Outro 39:07
Bloopers 40:00

46: Cross-Platform Video Calling with RSYS Dec 19, 2022

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: The time to talk about calling libraries that power most of our audio and video calls across Meta’s app. Alice, Ishan and Hani join Pascal to talk about how they replaced the different calling solutions with a library that’s extensible by the teams that choose to adopt it. But with great power comes great responsibility, so how does their team balance the desire for new features with the mandate to stay small, fast and reliable? Tune in for episode 46 to learn this and more!

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy and https://mastodon.social/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Rsys: A smaller, faster video calling library for our apps: https://engineering.fb.com/2020/12/21/video-engineering/rsys/
Flipper: https://fbflipper.com/
Horizon Workrooms: https://www.meta.com/de/en/work/workrooms/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Team Overview 1:34
RSYS History 4:42
Design Tradeoffs 6:10
Testing Infrastructure 8:09
Usage and Support Model 11:04
Core Architectural Components 12:58
Changing Engines Mid-Air 16:48
Measuring Quality 19:30
Building on top of RSYS 21:34
Collaboration Model 24:22
Feature Development 26:41
Experimentation 28:43
Metaverse Strategy 29:51
What's Next for RSYS 33:26
Outro 34:36
Bloopers 35:24

45: Syncing GitHub to Monorepo with Jon Nov 30, 2022

Back from a short hiatus, Pascal is joined by Jon to talk about the infrastructure that allows commit to sync between Meta's monorepo and GitHub. While ShipIt has been around for a while, allowing commits from the internal repository to sync out to GitHub, Diff Train is its younger brother to allow the inverse. This makes it possible for open-source-first projects like PyTorch to develop on GitHub and bring changes back into the monorepo without sacrificing security and reliability.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Intro Jon 1:49
Open-sourcing an internal project 7:26
Open Source Team @ Meta 10:22
Third-party dependencies 12:07
ShipIt 13:48
Diff Train 29:01
Most excited about 41:07
The GIL 42:29
Outro 44:22

BONUS: Comparing Company Cultures with Jay Aug 31, 2022

Ever wondered how the culture of big companies like Meta, Microsoft and Amazon differ? Jay comes with a fairly unique perspective as he has now worked at all three of them. In his discussion with Pascal, he shares his views on the trade-offs that a company value like “Move Fast” brings along and how companies assign different weights to the value of making mistakes.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Power On: The Story of Xbox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJYsA1jXf60

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Jay Introduction 1:18
Business Engineering at Meta 2:43
Social Impact 5:35
Culture Shocks 8:24
The Value of Mistakes 14:15
Finding your Pace 16:14
Modes of Working in Different Teams 19:32
Expectations vs Reality 23:36
Workflows 30:02
Incidents 37:26
Internal Mobility 42:24
Outro 45:30
Bloopers 46:10

44: Building a Cross-App Messaging Platform Jul 29, 2022

msys is the technology that underpins most of the messaging products Meta offers. What started as a small library in C wrapping sqlite is now used by many teams across the company and is now trying to address the developer experiences challenges that arise from the initial focus on speed and size above all else. Tune in to Pascal's interview to learn how Akshay and Chris are tackling this and other thorny issues.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Introduction Chris 1:33
Introduction Akshay 2:54
msys overview 3:37
Products adopting msys 7:16
Building features with msys 13:06
Migrations 20:28
Optimising DevX 26:38
Web Client 33:30
What's Next for msys 34:40
Outro 36:50
Outtakes 37:45

43: Building for the metaverse with Cami Jun 30, 2022

Cami returns to the Meta Tech Podcast, with now having 18 months of AR/VR experience under her belt. Cami is excited to share what developers can now do on the Quest platform. In this episode, Pascal and Cami discuss new SDKs for motion controls, voice and spatial objects; and for creators without programming experience - there’s Horizon Worlds.

Cami, as a Developer Advocate, shares her expertise whilst being acutely aware of areas that require careful consideration.

To find out more from Cami and the exciting updates on Quest, tune into episode 43 of the Meta Tech Podcast.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Display prototypes on Zuck’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/4/videos/355247026677540/
Boz to the Future on Display Tech: https://www.facebook.com/1681/videos/390455039578133/
Presence Platform Announcement: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/introducing-presence-platform-unleashing-mixed-reality-and-natural-interaction-for-oculus-developers/?locale=en_GB
Presence Platform Developer Portal: https://developer.oculus.com/presence-platform/
Cami on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cwillycs
Keep talking and nobody explodes: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2010043642376517/?locale=en_GB
wit.ai: https://wit.ai/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Cami: Reintro 2:01
Horizon Worlds 3:22
Presence Platform SDK 7:59
Voice SDK 12:57
Insights SDK 17:34
Next-Gen Displays 24:14
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes 28:20
Building for Horizon 31:37
ELI5 on YouTube 36:59
Meta Connect 42:51
Outro 44:14

42: Building People-Centric Apps with Maria May 31, 2022

The approach we take to building the Facebook app is based around three adjectives: trustworthy, people-centric and unified. In this episode, Pascal talks with Maria who is a director of engineering for product architecture and product excellence. They discuss what it means for a culture that is known for being driven by metrics to become more people-centric. What are examples of metrics that are aligned with people goals and when do they fail to capture them? Tune in to hear the answers to these questions and much more.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Rachel Nabors on The Diff: https://thediffpodcast.com/docs/episode-12
Meet the Developers: Mobile Edition (Pritesh Nandgaonkar): https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2022/05/23/meet-the-developers-pritesh-nandgaonkar/
Meta Open Source on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FacebookOpenSource
Meta Tech Podcast Episode 29: Design Systems with Sriram: https://pca.st/u8r4u6h6
Meta Tech Podcast Episode 9: Android Bytecode Optimisation with Emma https://pca.st/J3cn

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
The Diff: Episode 12 1:23
Meet The Developer: Prish 1:38
Meta Open Source on YouTube 2:01
Intro 2:26
Intro Maria 2:36
Craft in FB App 5:15
Metrics vs People? 6:40
Unquantifiable Quality Goals 10:14
Dropping Facial Recognition 11:38
Dynamic Goals in a Dynamic World 13:21
Driving Cultural Change 15:49
Average vs Power Users 18:53
Metrics for Quality 22:33
Dev Tools' Role for Quality 29:12
Supporting People at Meta 33:38
Most Exciting Upcoming Change 39:25
Outro 40:43
Bloopers 42:00

41: Earth Week Special - Carbon Explorer with Bilge Apr 22, 2022

For our second special for Earth Week, we are talking to Bilge who works as a research scientist at Meta AI. Her open-source project Carbon Explorer evaluates solutions to make data centres operate on 24/7 renewable energy. Why this is easier said than done and how engineers can help within their day-to-day work to reduce their carbon footprint are among the many things Pascal and Bilge discuss in this episode.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Carbon Explorer: https://github.com/facebookresearch/CarbonExplorer
Holistic Approach for Designing Carbon Aware Datacenters: https://arxiv.org/abs/2201.10036
Open Catalyst: https://opencatalystproject.org/
Open Catalyst SchrepTech Interview: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/how-ai-is-helping-address-the-climate-crisis/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:05
Intro Bilge 2:18
Optimising for the Environment 4:01
Carbon Explorer 5:02
Mitigations for Renewable Intermittency 7:17
Operational and Embodied Footprints 10:57
Motivations for Carbon Explorer 13:06
Battery Storage 14:36
Renewable Curtailment 15:52
Empowering Engineers 18:20
Carbon Intensity APIs 19:22
AI Carbon Intensity Forecasts 22:07
Carbon Metrics 23:17
Where to Learn More 25:38
Outro 27:32
Bloopers 29:45

40: Earth Week Special - Green AI with Ramya Apr 19, 2022

The most recent IPCC report has reiterated that the climate crisis is an all hands on deck situation. We all need to think about the impact our actions have on the planet that provides our life support system. Ramya is a TPM on the Meta AI team and analyses the impact AI has, as it grows superlinearly, on energy use and carbon emissions. Her recent work on Green AI identifies ways for reducing that footprint without limiting the options engineers have for building great products for connecting people. Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/. Acronyms:

LCA: Life Cycle Assessment
PUE: Power Usage Efficiency

Links:

Sustainable AI: Environmental Implications, Challenges and Opportunities: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.00364
Make an Impact for Earth Day: https://about.fb.com/news/2022/04/make-an-impact-for-earth-day/
Green AI SchrepTech: https://ai.facebook.com/blog/how-ai-is-helping-address-the-climate-crisis/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:05
Intro Ramya 2:13
The Cost of AI 3:05
Measuring AI's Carbon Footprint 11:00
Trade Offs 13:28
Calculating the Carbon Intensity 16:01
Mitigation Options 18:36
Cultural Changes 25:35
Societal Value 26:13
Running AI on Edge Devices 29:02
What's Next? 32:33
Outro 34:55

39: White Labeling Messenger for iOS with Amy Mar 11, 2022

When Amy joined the Workplace team nearly seven years ago (back then still under the name Facebook for Work), it became clear that it would require a messaging service. While there were already a few options available, none of them was designed to be plugged into a new app. That's when Amy and her team decided to take on white labeling Messenger for iOS to turn it into what would become Workplace Chat. Amy and Pascal discuss the challenges of taking a huge app that is under constant development and adding your own functionality on top.

After many years on Workplace, Amy recently switched teams and now works on Lexical, "an extensible text editor library that does things differently". To find out why you should get excited about the upcoming open source release of the library, tune in!

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Lexical: https://lexical.dev/
Workplace: https://www.workplace.com/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Introducing Amy 1:54
Joining Workplace 3:54
Early Days at Facebook for Work iOS 6:38
Whitelabeling Messenger 8:10
Project Workspeed 10:23
msys 14:39
End-to-End Encryption 17:50
Workplace Chat for Desktop 19:33
Unified Editor 24:27
Lexical 28:01
Text Rendering Models 34:16
Outro 37:02

38: From Sales to Tech - How Kevin Made The Switch Feb 08, 2022

Kevin has had an unusual career path that led him to an engineering role at Meta. He first joined the company in a sales role before he moved into a more product-focused position. Working closely with engineers, Kevin decides to pursue a career in software development himself. Instead of dropping out of his job to get formal education in the space, he takes online courses and within less than a year smashes the internal interview process. To learn what his thinking behind the change was and which resources were particularly helpful, tune in to episode 38!

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod), Instagram (https://instagram.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://www.metacareers.com/.

Links:

Coursera Datastructures and Algorithms classes: https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=data%20structures%20and%20algorithms
Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Introduction Kevin 1:22
Learning to Code 3:38
Learning Resources 12:50
Deciding When to Stop 16:42
Interview Prep 21:57
The Big Day 24:45
Dealing With Imposter Syndrome 29:53
Interviewing is Broken 38:41
Outro 40:52

37: Faster and Smaller Messenger for iOS With Amy Jan 31, 2022

New year, new us! Inside Facebook Mobile is now the Meta Tech Podcast but Pascal will continue to bring you stories about mobile development and many other topics. For this episode's interview, we're tackling one of the few remaining big apps we never had a guest from: Messenger. Amy worked on Messenger for 3 years before recently moving on to Reality Apps to work on AR.

Amy discusses with Pascal how Messenger for iOS was rewritten as part of Project Lightspeed to make it smaller and faster. They used a range of low-level hacks while providing high-level abstractions that product teams could safely and productively build on top of. Amy was also the first one to prototype with Catalyst and Meta and has some important tips for you on how not to accidentally wipe your Mac while doing so.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/metatechpod) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://facebookcareers.com.

Links:

Project LightSpeed: https://engineering.fb.com/2020/03/02/data-infrastructure/messenger/
Mac Catalyst: https://developer.apple.com/mac-catalyst/
Buck: https://buck.build/
Remodel: https://github.com/facebook/remodel - Remodel is a tool that helps iOS and OS X developers avoid repetitive code by generating Objective-C models that support coding, value comparison, and immutability.

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Introduction Amy 2:25
Messenger Culture 3:37
Building with Buck 5:38
Catalyst 6:27
Project Lightspeed 17:13
Remodel 23:55
Image Asset Optimisations 28:50
Theming 36:44
What's Next for Amy? 38:21
Outro 39:21
Bloopers 39:54

36: Developer Experience with Chandrika Dec 17, 2021

Keeping engineers effective is not a small task when you work at Meta’s scale. Many of the tools you take for granted simply break or become unbearably slow. Chandrika’s team looks after developer experience at Meta and takes a holistic approach that spans the editing experience (IDEs, editors), builds, continuous integration and even custom calendar tooling. Her team ensures that as new platforms, for instance AR/VR, and languages like Swift and Kotlin emerge, our infrastructure is ready.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/insidefbmobile), Instagram (https://instagram.com/insidefbmobile) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://facebookcareers.com.

Links:

The Diff Podcast: https://thediffpodcast.com/docs/episode-10/
Meta Connect Keynote: https://fb.watch/9YydoWHMEE/
Jest: https://jestjs.io/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
News: The Diff is back 1:25
Chandrika before Meta 1:50
Meta vs other Megacorps 9:57
DevEx at Meta 12:05
Different Dev Infra Teams 23:18
Unexpected Challenges 26:45
Kotlin & Swift 30:34
Measuring Developer Experience 35:53
App Health & Perf 37:46
Cross-App Dev 40:12
Outro 42:17

35: Facebook App Health with Jon Nov 11, 2021

Did you know that you can "rage shake" your phone to create a bug report in most Meta apps? If you did, have you ever wondered what happened after you hit submit? In this episode's interview, Pascal talks to Jon about App Health and how his team ensures that despite thousands of engineers shipping code every day, the apps remain reliable and fast.

Got feedback? Send us an email to mobilepodcasts@fb.com, tweet us at @insidefbmobile (https://twitter.com/insidefbmobile), DM us on Instagram (https://instagram.com/insidefbmobile) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://facebookcareers.com.

Links:

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Jon Intro 1:30
App Health Mission 2:58
Rage Shake & Fly Trap 5:27
Life of a Regression 8:49
Experiments and App Health 13:47
Tracking Down Perf Regressions 16:13
Soft Errors 18:54
Favourite Tools 23:35
Backend Regressions 25:31
Rolling out a Fix 28:00
gCPU 29:45
Wrapping Up 32:12
Outro 33:20
Bloopers 34:04

34: Open Source Developer Advocacy with Cami Oct 15, 2021

Cami is a developer advocate for Open Source and Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), our AR/VR organisation. In this episode's interview Cami and our host Pascal discuss how developer advocacy is approached at Facebook, how to build developer empathy, and tackle the eternal question of why it's worth investing in Open Source. If you've ever wanted to dip your toes into VR development, stick around for the end when Cami shares some of her favourite resources.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/insidefbmobile), Instagram (https://instagram.com/insidefbmobile) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out https://facebookcareers.com.

Links:

Hand Tracking Pirates Demo: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/new-oculus-open-source-library-and-pirates-demo-app-qa-with-developer-luca-mefisto-on-hand-tracking-innovation/
Hand Physics Lab: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/app/3392175350802835/
Build Your First VR App with Unity: https://developer.oculus.com/documentation/unity/unity-tutorial/
Unity VR: https://learn.unity.com/course/oculus-vr
Cami on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cwillycs?s=09
ValemVR on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ValemVR
Oculus on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/oculusvr
Facebook Open Source on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FacebookOpenSource
Traveling While Black: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/go/1994117610669719/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Cami Intro 1:21
What is developer advocacy? 4:08
Developer empathy 9:45
Why invest in Open Source? 14:23
End of life for OSS projects 19:57
AR/VR abstractions 22:42
Becoming an expert learner 32:21
VR dev learning resources 37:56
Most underrated FB OSS project 43:06
Outro 46:25

33: Switching Teams at FB with Sash Sep 22, 2021

Facebook has a unique recruitment model. Instead of being assigned to one team, you first end up in Bootcamp, where you learn how the company functions and our tools and frameworks work. Then you get to look for teams, work with them and decide which one to join. Because the team selection is decoupled from hiring, switching teams is easy. In this episode, we’re talking to Sash who has been taking advantage of internal mobility by switching teams every year almost on the dot. Over the course of his career at Facebook, he has worked on iOS animations, Android hardware and most recently the Wrist-based human-computer interaction interface that is being developed by FRL Labs.

Links:

Inside Facebook Reality Labs: Wrist-based interaction for the next computing platform: https://tech.fb.com/inside-facebook-reality-labs-wrist-based-interaction-for-the-next-computing-platform/
Boz To The Future: https://www.facebook.com/boztothefuturepod
Keyframes Animation Library: https://github.com/facebookarchive/Keyframes
IFBM 30: Linting for Design Quality with Elle: https://pca.st/episode/1e22130d-88a5-4ea9-a968-692cac232a78
IFBM 31: Intentional Architecture with Yuan and Dustin: https://pca.st/episode/2199bc68-2287-41b7-aa45-ab52595e1c62
Richie's Plank Experience: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/1642239225880682/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06

Joining FB 1:52

News Feed Delight 4:20

Switch to Hardware 13:25

Hackamonth 19:27

AOSP Engineering 22:07

Hardware Prototyping at FRL 24:50

Developing for VR and Favourite Experiences 30:35

Outro 36:52

Bloopers 37:44

32: Measuring UI Quality with Sara, Aaron and Patrik Aug 27, 2021

For the third and final episode focusing on UI quality, Pascal is joined by Sara, Patrik and Aaron to discuss how design reviews happen at Facebook. Instead of looking at static screenshots alongside the code, reviews now include a dynamic representation of the view hierarchy that not only allows for inspection of properties but also directly highlights violations of Facebook's design standards for accessibility and usability. Learn how all of this grew out of a tool suite originally built for the web and much more in episode 32 of Inside Facebook Mobile.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/insidefbmobile), Instagram (https://instagram.com/insidefbmobile) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out http://fb.com/careers.

Links:

Podcast: Boz to the Future - https://tech.fb.com/introducing-boz-to-the-future-a-new-podcast-series-from-facebook-reality-labs/
Facebook Open Source on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCQY962PmHabTjaHv2wJzfQ
IFBM 29: Design Systems with Sriram - https://pca.st/u8r4u6h6
IFBM 30: Linting for Design Quality with Elle - https://pca.st/q336vyxe
Sapienz: https://engineering.fb.com/2018/05/02/developer-tools/sapienz-intelligent-automated-software-testing-at-scale/
Jest - https://jestjs.io/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:05
News: Boz To The Future 0:43
News: FBOSS ELI5 on YouTube 1:26
Interview Teaser 1:50
Interview Greeting 2:48
Sara Intro 3:10
Aaron Intro 4:15
Patrik Intro 4:43
UI Quality Team Mission 5:39
Shift Left Initiative 6:40
History of Quality Linting 8:08
Linting on Mobile 9:29
UIQR 15:17
Designer Diff Review 18:17
E2E Testing with Jest 25:55
Sapienz 27:12
UI Quality Scoring 29:17
Outro 41:16
Blooper 41:57

31: Intentional Architecture with Yuan and Dustin Jul 28, 2021

“What’s Facebook’s mobile architecture?” is a question we hear often. Instead of top-down MVC, MVW or MVVM, Facebook delegates the responsibility of choosing the right architectural patterns down to the engineers working on products.

This episode's guests Yuan and Dustin pick up where Fabio left us in episode 28 and explain how the Product Foundation org builds abstractions that give engineers autonomy when they want and constraints for features to work cross-app when they need it.

Links:

IFBM 14 - Facebook iOS UI Infrastructure with Adam: https://pca.st/0qu2
IFBM 28: Modularising iOS Apps with Fabio: https://pca.st/episode/be165e38-74f3-449f-889a-eab14316c6ed
Codemod: https://github.com/facebookarchive/codemod
Fastmod: https://github.com/facebookincubator/fastmod
ComponentKit: https://componentkit.org/
Litho: https://fblitho.com/
React Native: https://reactnative.dev/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Guest introductions 2:19
App Architecture 6:49
Codemodding 31:18
Shared Architectural Concepts 33:06
Building for Newsfeed 34:59
Scrolling Lists 41:41
Outro 55:43
Bloopers 56:36

30: Linting for Design Quality with Elle Jun 04, 2021

We are continuing our focus on UI Quality from last episode and are diving deep into design linters. Elle and her team work on Facebook-internal Figma plugins that provide guidance on aspects like colours and usability of user interfaces. In the interview, Elle and Pascal discuss how the plugin leverages Facebook's web architecture to roll out changes quickly and how a shared REST API allows for rules to be used in multiple contexts.

Got feedback? Send it to us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/insidefbmobile), Instagram (https://instagram.com/insidefbmobile) and don’t forget to follow our host @passy (https://twitter.com/passy). Fancy working with us? Check out http://fb.com/careers.

Links

Docusaurus 2.0 Beta - https://docusaurus.io/blog/2021/05/12/announcing-docusaurus-two-beta
F8 - https://developers.facebook.com/f8/
Rapid release at massive scale - https://engineering.fb.com/2017/08/31/web/rapid-release-at-massive-scale/
Figma API - https://www.figma.com/developers/api
GraphQL - https://graphql.org/
Relay - https://relay.dev/

Timestamps

Intro 0:06
News: Docusaurus 2
News: F8 1:59
Elle introduction 2:13
Shift Left Initiative 3:32
UI Layout Linters 6:03
Figma Plugins 14:20
Outro 27:26
Bloopers 28:23

29: Design Systems with Sriram May 13, 2021

To improve consistency across our family of apps, engineers have built a large number of reusable components. But how do designers communicate to engineers which component to use? How do you keep the look consistent across our various frameworks? How do you make sure that documentation stays up-to-date? The way we always do: by building tools. Sriram from the Design Systems Engineering team talks about how their org solves the design-engineering handoff problems and improves the overall UI quality of Facebook apps. They work on a suite of tools that spans from providing access to our components directly in design tools like Figma to metrics that tell developers about potential quality issues in their surfaces. Tune in to learn directly from Sriram how we attempt to solve design at scale.

Links:

F8 Refresh: https://www.f8.com/
Flipper: https://fbflipper.com/
Facebook Open Source on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/FacebookOpenSource
Storybook: https://storybook.js.org/
InVision Design System Manager: https://www.invisionapp.com/design-system-manager
Figma: https://www.figma.com/

Timestamps:

Intro 0:06
Interview 2:39
Outro 30:17

28: Modularising iOS Apps with Fabio Apr 07, 2021

Fabio joins Pascal to go deep into a listener question: How does Facebook modularise iOS applications? After discussing the state of the iOS build systems and package managers out in the wild, they turn to Buck, Facebook’s monorepo build system, and how it helps developers to define clear module boundaries. One of the problems when a new module is only one new folder away are dependency graphs which look like a big ball of spaghetti. Thankfully, Buck offers some ways of taming sprawling graphs before they get out of control.

Topics:

Litho: https://fblitho.com/
Litho RenderCore: https://github.com/facebook/litho/tree/master/litho-rendercore
Flipper: https://fbflipper.com/
ComponentKit: https://componentkit.org/
Pragma Conference 2016 - Fabio Milano - 'I have a framework idea' - Repeat less, share more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml6NSv5wDRU
Buck: https://buck.build/
Spiritfarer: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12924108/
Ori and the Will of the Wisps: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8329350/

27: Using Data for Better Android Notifications with Garima Feb 04, 2021

Garima joins Rachel (@rachelnabors) and Pascal (@passy) to discuss the challenges of building custom layouts for notifications in a fragmented Android ecosystem. They discuss how sampled data helps to ensure that our billions of daily active people get the best possible experience and users on older phones aren’t left behind. If you ever wondered what the “useful” and “not useful” buttons on Facebook notifications actually do and how you clicking on them could help not just you, but all people on Facebook have a better experience, listen in!

Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

Timestamps

Intro 0:06
Garima early days at FB 1:16
Notification Infrastructure 5:21
Outro 46:12
Bloopers 46:46

26: Kotlin Redux with Thomas Nov 26, 2020

Rachel (@rachelnabors) and Pascal (@passy) are back for another interview about Android infrastructure at FB. Thomas joins them to share how the internal Kotlin adoption has progressed since the last time we checked in with Sergey on the topic. In the deeply technical discussion, the three discuss how ABI generation speeds up builds, which Kotlin language features still need to be used with caution and what a plan to 100% Kotlin for Android might look like.

Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

Topics

React 17: https://reactjs.org/blog/2020/10/20/react-v17.html
React Native docs update: https://reactnative.dev/blog/2020/07/23/docs-update
ktfmt: https://github.com/facebookincubator/ktfmt

Timestamps

Intro 0:00
News 1:00
Interview 7:28
Outro 44:44
Bloopers 52:29

25: Instagram Reels with Kevin and Martin Aug 28, 2020

For another socially distant interview, Pascal and Rachel are joined by Martin and Kevin who work on Instagram Reels, which had its global launch just a few weeks ago. They lift the veil on country tests, what makes stitching videos seamlessly together so hard on Android and iOS and share their thoughts on the short-form video space in general. You will also learn why doing the simple thing first really pays off when working on complex projects.

Before the interview, Pascal walks you through the recent events in the Facebook Open Source space.

Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

Topics

Hermes: https://hermesengine.dev/
Facebook Open Source on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCQY962PmHabTjaHv2wJzfQ
Docusaurus v2: https://v2.docusaurus.io/

Timestamps

Intro 0:05
News 1:16
Interview 3:32
Outro 43:02

Bloopers 43:45

24: COVID-19 Hub with Chang, Jarman and Zaven Jul 22, 2020

Inside Facebook Mobile is back for a special interview with the team behind the Facebook COVID-19 Info Centre. Chang, Jarman and Zaven share their experiences of building and shipping a global product like this over the course of just a few weeks. We discuss how the early architectural decisions enabled the seamless collaboration with tens of teams that were all working remotely.

Before we get to the interview, Mihaela joins Pascal for a quick check-in on Litho, the native UI framework for Android, and Flipper, an extensible dev-tools platform for mobile.

Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

Topics

COVID-19 Hub: https://www.facebook.com/covid-19
Litho: https://fblitho.com/
Flipper: https://fbflipper.com/

Timestamps

Intro 0:06
News: Litho 1:09
News: Flipper 4:31
Interview 7:27
Post-Interview 35:36
Outro 37:50
Bloopers 38:14

23: Organising the Women of React Remote Conf Apr 17, 2020

With large-scale public events seeming rather distant right now, the concept of virtual conferences is an exciting way to stay in touch with people and learn new things. Pascal is joined by the organising team of the Women of React conference, where women take the virtual stage, but everyone is welcome to attend and participate. Cassidy, Sara, Kevin, Jenn and our very own Rachel share how they came up with the idea and what you need to kick off your own online conference.

The conference will happen on Saturday, April 25, 2020 and you can register for free at https://womenofreact.com/.

Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

Topics

Women of React: https://womenofreact.com/
event.Handler() pod: https://eventhandlerpod.com/
Board Game Arena: https://boardgamearena.com/

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro
1:54 - Interview
27:28 - Outro

Update: No Interview Episode for March Mar 31, 2020

Unfortunately due to the current global pandemic, we don't have an interview for you, but stay tuned and subscribe to the feed for some remote interviews in the near future.

Do follow @passy, @rachelnabors, and @insidefbmobile for updates.

22: Scaling WhatsApp with Silky Feb 29, 2020

For the first time, Rachel and Pascal are joined by a guest from WhatsApp. Silky walks the two through a staggering array of optimisations WhatsApp deploy to make sure that text, media and documents arrive quickly, reliably and safely on the other end. They discuss going from five to six nines of reliability for Facebook’s distributed blob store, POPs, FNAs, and fighting abuse on an end-to-end encrypted platform. As ever, before the interview, Pascal and Rachel discuss some news from the Open Source world, including React Native documentation updates, an exciting contracting opportunity on the Docusaurus project and the latest Facebook Open Source statistics.

Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

Topics

React Native Docs: https://reactnative.dev/docs/getting-started
Docusaurus Contract: https://profacebook.applytojob.com/apply/hZPoVr1Eoj/Front-End-Engineer-V
Open source year 2019 in review: https://engineering.fb.com/open-source/open-source-2019/
Evolution of WhatsApp within Facebook’s data centers: https://atscaleconference.com/videos/evolution-of-whatsapp-within-facebooks-data-centers/
WhatsApp on how it’s fighting bulk messaging and fake accounts: https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/06/whatsapp-on-how-its-fighting-bulk-messaging-and-fake-accounts/
How WhatsApp Reduced Spam for Over 1 Billion People: https://developers.facebook.com/videos/f8-2017/how-whatsapp-reduced-spam-for-over-1-billion-people/

Timestamps

Intro 0:05
News: React Native Docs 1:02
News: Docusaurus Contractor 1:52
News: Open Source in Review 2019 3:10
Interview with Silky 5:05
Sharding Graph Databases 6:10
Getting into CompSci 7:45
Scaling an Exabyte Blob Store 9:00
Benefits of Shared Infrastructure 13:46
Going from 5 to 6 Nines 17:19
POPs 18:09
ISP-Level Caches 19:19
Making WhatsApp New-Year-Safe 22:13
Fighting Encrypted Abuse at WhatsApp 25:00
Encrypted Media Forwarding 32:45
ML Teams at FB 35:42
Transition to Management (and Back) 37:37
Outro 43:56
Aftershow/Outtakes 48:55
Harley Quinn: Birds Of Prey 50:59

21: Kotlin at Facebook with Sergey Jan 31, 2020

Pascal is joined by Rachel in the co-host chair for this first episode of the new decade. The two interview Sergey from the Android UI Frameworks team to discuss the long-awaited rollout of Kotlin within Facebook. Sergey himself is currently working on a new set of APIs for building UI components in Kotlin.

With Rachel’s background in React and React Native, they explore some of the inspirations and differences between React, React Native and Litho before talking about the design of new Kotlin APIs for Litho. The last part of the conversation focuses on the gradual adoption of Kotlin at Facebook and why this is a big undertaking at a company operating at this scale.

Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

Links

Litho: https://fblitho.com/
React Native Docs: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/getting-started
Flipper: https://fbflipper.com/
ktfmt: https://github.com/facebookincubator/ktfmt
Redex: https://github.com/facebook/redex
Redex IFBM Episode: https://pca.st/J3cn

Timestamps

Intro 0:00
React Native Docs Update 0:58
Flipper Sidebar Reorganisation 4:42
Interview with Sergey 8:01
Litho and React-style UI frameworks 14:47
Kotlin API Design 27:53
Kotlin at Facebook 36:30
Redex Code Optimisation 39:25
Introducing New Languages at Facebook 40:32
Facebook Mobile Build Infrastructure 41:19
Litho's Target Audience 43:07
Educating About New Languages 46:29
Code Formatting (ktfmt) 48:45
Current Kotlin Use at Facebook 50:21
Outro 51:41
Bloopers 55:40

20: droidcon London 2019, Part II Dec 20, 2019

For the last episode of the decade, Pascal is joined by Inside Facebook Mobile royalty Emil, who shares what he has been up to since his last appearance on the podcast and how Facebook Open Source is still part of his day-to-day work.

Then we head over to Droidcon UK 2019 again, where Pascal interviews Aziz from the Android Native UI Frameworks team about benchmarking UI components, followed by a chat with Aziz’s teammates Andy and Pasquale about effective multi-threading on Android.

Unfortunately, the video recordings of the talks are still unavailable, but we will update you if that changes.

Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

News and Topics

fbjni: https://github.com/facebookincubator/fbjni
Jest: https://jestjs.io/
Litho: https://fblitho.com/
Flipper: http://fbflipper.com/
Visly: http://visly.app/
Facebook and Microsoft Partnering on Remote Development: https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2019/11/19/facebook-microsoft-partnering-remote-development/
The Diff - Talking Libra with Eric Nakagawa: https://thediffpodcast.com/docs/episode-8

Timestamps

Intro
fbjni 3:43
News: FB and MS work on VS Code 8:47
Skip Language (http://skiplang
Interviews 11:55
Interview: Aziz on UI Benchmarking 12:20
Interview: Pasquale and Andy on Threading 21:00
Post-Interview Chat with Emil 32:36
Outro 41:03
Bloopers 41:44

19: droidcon London 2019, Part I Nov 15, 2019

Pascal went mobile again and brought the mics to this year’s droidcon Android conference in London. He interviewed the record-breaking six speakers Facebook had this year and discussed some topics with them. This episode kicks off with Sergey, who presented a deep-dive into the current state of cross-platform coroutine libraries for Kotlin, comparing Reaktive and kotlinx.coroutines Flow in their usability, performance and memory appetite. The second interview is with Alexander from the Fresco team who talks about the evolution of the open source image loading and memory management library and teases at what’s up next for the widely used project. In the last interview we hear from Lisa (https://twitter.com/lisawrayz), a software engineer on the Messenger Lite team. She joins Pascal to chat about the design principles that went into designing a messenger application for emerging markets.

Sadly, the video recordings of the talks are currently unavailable, but we will update you here and on the podcast as soon as that changes.

Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

News and Topics

fbjni soft launch: https://github.com/facebookincubator/fbjni
PyTorch for Android: https://pytorch.org/mobile/android/
Fresco: https://frescolib.org/
Reaktive: https://github.com/badoo/Reaktive
Kotlinx.coroutines: https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlinx.coroutines
Messenger Lite: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.mlite

Timestamps

Intro 0:05
News: fbjni 1:43
News: PyTorch for Android 2:34
Interviews 3:05
Correction 3:43
Sergey on Kotlin Coroutines 4:26
Alexander on Fresco 11:42
Lisa on Messenger Lite 26:58
Outro 35:50
Nope, no bloopers 36:33

18: Outside Facebook Mobile at the London Mobile Forum 2019 Oct 18, 2019

Once a year, Facebook invites developers from various companies to a cosy place somewhere in East London to talk for a day about scaling challenges on mobile. This year, Mihaela and Pascal join the fun and talk to a bunch of the attendees, which are for the first time not (all) Facebook employees. Tune in to learn how Deliveroo are moving from Java to Kotlin, the BBC is using their app to find a more inclusive audience, how Asos moved away from never-ending feature branches and much more. Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

Topics Discussed

mvfst-rl: https://github.com/facebookresearch/mvfst-rl The Diff: https://thediffpodcast.com/ Tech & Society with Mark Zuckerberg: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tech-society-with-mark-zuckerberg/id1460731098

Timestamps

Intro 0:00
mvfst-rl 0:40
The Diff 1:20
Tech & Society 1:53
London Mobile Forum 2:19
Sophie Interview - The Guardian 4:48
Andrew Interview - BBC 7:17
Ana Interview - Deliveroo 10:03
Kateryna Interview - Magic Lab 13:20
Stefano Interview - Asos 19:33
Adiba Interview - Moody Month 23:29
Pasquale Interview - Facebook/Litho 29:43
Maria Interview - Deliveroo 34:24
Abdul Interview - Deliveroo 39:36
Outro 44:57
Bloopers 47:28

17: Hermes JS Engine Development with Marc Sep 20, 2019

Every time we get to talk about an open-source project on our podcast, we couldn't be happier. This episode we have Marc to talk about Hermes, an open-source JavaScript engine, optimised for running React Native apps on Android. You can listen to Marc explain why it was necessary to build a JavaScript engine to support the needs of a particular framework and get a glimpse of the architecture and the design decisions behind it. Tune in now for episode 17! Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

Topics Discussed

Hermes: https://hermesengine.dev/ React Native: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/hermes

Timestamps

Intro 00:05
Interview: Marc 00:57
Hermes Overview 02:25
Design Tradeoffs 07:01
Garbage Collector 11:56
Feature Omissions 15:36
Hermes Technical Design 17:35
Developer Experience 19:23
What's Next? 20:15
Using Hermes Without RN 21:32
Outro 22:28
Bloopers 00:25:50

16: React Native Developer Advocacy and Documentation Engineering with Rachel Aug 16, 2019

Join us for this episode where Pascal and Fabio interview one of Facebook’s new joiners: Rachel is a developer advocate on the React Core team in London.

React is one of the biggest open source UI frameworks in the world, a reputation kept sustainable especially thanks to the amazing work the React Core team puts into the educational material available to the community.

Rachel shares her journey from cartoonist to developer advocacy roles to the present day, where she curates and maintains documentation material built for people rather than just coders.

How to find the missing or next chapter of your docs? How to measure success? This and much more in episode 16.

Please do send us feedback! You can reach us via email mobilepodcasts@fb.com, Twitter (@insidefbmobile) or Instagram (insidefbmobile).

Topics

Dev Tools Challenger: http://devtoolschallenger.com/
React: https://reactjs.org
React Native: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/
Docusaurus: https://docusaurus.io
ComponentKit: https://componentkit.org
Flipper: https://fbflipper.com
Web Animations API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Animations_API
MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/
Rachel’s Web Animation Docs: http://rachelnabors.com/waapi
Rachel’s book on UI Animation: https://abookapart.com/products/animation-at-work
Rachel’s courses on CSS Animation and Cartooning: https://courses.rachelnabors.com/
Inclusive speech linter: https://alexjs.com/

Timestamps

Intro