LinkedIn mobile’s move from Rails to node.js
Informative writeup with citations about LinkedIn moving their mobile stack to node.js
We are a long, long way from Java. Thank goodness!
In 2008, I joined a software engineering team that LinkedIn that was focused on building things outside the standard Java stack. You see, back then, to develop code for linkedin.com, you needed a Mac Pro with 6gigs of RAM just to run your code. And those requirements kept growing. If my calculations are correct, the standard setup for engineers now is a machine with 20 or more gigabytes of RAM just to RUN the software...
Well, to all honesty, this is not only java's fault... A system for an established business model can be structured in a modular way, when developers do not have run the whole system every time they need to change something. It does required collaborative work by the whole dev team to get there.
I lol'd at this:
Oh, and we also decided to use OAuth for authenticating the iPhone client. Three legged OAuth, so we also turned those Rails servers into OAuth providers. Why did we use 3-legged OAuth? Simple: we had no idea what we were doing. I’LL ADMIT IT.
