[wallabie]

In the distant future, when they discover the endless jars of eggs and sperm in Mark Zuckerberg's basement, somewhere, Chris Holt will be saying "I told you so."

[kowdermeister]

I mean, no one in their right mind REALLY believed that Facebook needs all that server farms, right? :)

[72deluxe]

They did when they ran PHP. Now they compile their PHP to C++ so it'll run faster and with less CPU and cooling requirements.

Also, writing PHP is easier than C++ so it's beneficial in that they get a wider pool of developers to use, and they can pay less.

Genius really.

So, now their server farms must be a cover-up, or they're using an old version of MySQL that kept a lot of its clustering data in RAM and are afraid it'll bomb out :-)

[seattle_spring]

So they can pay less? Do you have any idea how much FB pays?

[72deluxe]

No but I know that PHP developers get paid less than C++, typically. That's particularly the case here in the UK.

I would wager than employing an army of C++ devs would be costlier than employing an army of PHP devs.