How Facebook dug deep within Android to fix its mobile app
When Facebook's mobile app began misbehaving on an older version of Android in late 2012, Facebook engineers had to dive deep into Android's code to figure out what was causing the mishap. In a whiteboard session today at Facebook headquarters, mobile engineering director Mike Shaver described how Facebook identified a problem in Android itself, then created a workaround for its own app so users wouldn't have to suffer.
At the beginning of the session, Shaver explained that he was particularly fond of the Android platform because it is both opportunistic and open. "The whole point of it is that there's no central power that drives it," Shaver said. "That's one of the things that makes Android so exciting to develop for." Facebook continues to see Android as a viable platform not only because of the amount of users Android has around the world, but because it allows Facebook to develop mobile applications that interact directly with the operating system. However, this isn't always easy.
