“Facebook’s Folly” — sounds like a mid-life-crisis-type watercraft, doesn’t it? But it’s actually a huge bundle of C++ utilities focused on speed, ease of use, and interoperability with other C++ libraries you already use.
The collection of reusable C++ library artifacts was developed in-house at Facebook to meet the needs of Facebook’s engineers. As they have done in the past with other open-source projects like Cassandra, HipHop, and Thrift, Facebook’s developers have now placed Folly into the realm of open-source software.
“The development of [Folly] was fueled by the desire to create complementary utilities that allowed us to move fast and not reinvent any wheels,” a Facebooker told VentureBeat last night in an email. “We worked to make this library as fast and easy-to-use as possible.”