Sorry to disappoint, but this isn't that kind of thrift. Ours has a capital T, and it's a software framework that takes one simple programming language and performs not-so-simple code generation to create programs that communicate easily and efficiently across many programming languages. As it turns out, computer languages aren't so different from people languages. Some things are just faster, easier, or more elegant in one than another. Ever tried to say "I love you" in German? Apologies to our German users, but it's no "Je t'adore." Parsing RSS in C++? Sounds tedious. Building an in-memory search index in PHP? Unfathomable!

Why are we giving it away? Many large corporations are famous for keeping this type of tool under lock and key, but we think we stand to gain much more by collaborating with other smart companies and developers. Plus, we figured a lot of you would really enjoy an inside look at some of the interesting software problems we're working on every day.

So what are you waiting for? Download the source:
http://developers.facebook.com/thrift/



Mark, a Technical Lead at Facebook, is reasonably confident that software is actually happier when written by computers, not people.