Did it actually require a patch? I thought it just required a certain env var set, so they probably could have just made a wrapper script that set it and invoked the binary (located somewhere other than /usr/bin/firefox), which I'd expect is very minimal packing step compared to patching the code for building
I don't read "patch" as necessarily a "source code patch" per-se. Even if they just add/modify one line in the build script, I'd say that particular distribution of the Firefox application to be "patched".
I know facebook uses mysql, but I also know that it is a bastardised custom version that has known constraints and has limited use (no foreign keys for example).
I spoke to the DBA who first deployed MySQL at Github and the vibe I got from him immediately was that he had doubled down on his prejudice: which is fine, but its not ok to ignore that it can be a lot of effort to work around issues with any given technology.
For a great example of what I mean: most people wouldn’t choose PHP for a new project (despite it having improved majorly) - the appeal to authority there is to say “it works for Facebook” without mentioning “Hack” or the myriad of internal processes to avoid the warts of PHP.
That a large headcount company can use something does not make it immune from criticism.
Is this really true?
I used to be a full-time PHP developer but I personally don't touch that language anymore. But it's still very popular around the world, I've seen multiple projects start this year use PHP, because that's the language the founders/most developers in the company are familiar with. Probably depends a lot on where in the world you're located.
Last Stack Overflow survey had ~20% of the people answering the survey saying that they still use PHP in some capacity.