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Comment by jamesgpearce | Hacker News Reader

I help with open source @ Facebook and wrote this article. AMA.

Hey there! I have lot of experience programming but not a lot of CS theory and low level engineering behind it. I find things like HHVM to be really inspiring, and I'd love to one day contribute to such a project. My question is-- how can I cross over from a script kiddie on steroids to a software engineer? Is there any hope if I'm not doctorate track? I'd appreciate any open resources you provide. Thank you for your great work!

It takes all sorts! and the best way to prove your chops is to just jump. You can fork HHVM and start by picking up a few of the easier issues and working through them. Our engineers on that project are really friendly and helpful. What can I say... dive in! What is the worst that can happen?

For NoSQL data stores, there's a significant amount of debate over using HBase vs Cassandra. Many HBase advocates point to the fact that HBase is used at Fb over cassandra. Can you comment on HBase in FB's architecture and which features you prioritized the most, leading FB to use it?

Actually, we have a few examples of Cassandra being used here too: Buck uses it (http://facebook.github.io/buck/concept/buckconfig.html) and so do Instagram (http://planetcassandra.org/blog/post/instagram-making-the-sw...) ... so as with all of these things, we evaluate options on a case-by-case basis.

Do you run xctool / Travis CI on OS X servers or have you found a way (or at least tried) to make it run on Linux?

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/12/apples-mac-mini...

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