In terms of engineering tradeoffs, this reminds me of a recent talk by Alan Kay where he says that to build the software of the future, you have to pay extra to get the hardware of the future today. [1] Joel Spolsky called it "throwing money at the problem" when, five years ago he got SSD's for everybody at Fog Creek just to deal with a slow build. [2]
I don't use Facebook, and I'm not suggesting that they're building the software of the future. But surely someone there is smart enough to know that, for this decision, time is on their side.
I don't use Facebook, and I'm not suggesting that they're building the software of the future. But surely someone there is smart enough to know that, for this decision, time is on their side.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7538063
[2] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/03/27.html