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PayPal Engineering
paypal-engineering.com · Company blog · on HN since 2013
PayPal's engineering team writes about its use of Node.js, Python, React, and accessibility tooling.
What HN saysHN commenters cite it for PayPal's move to Node.js and its "10 myths of enterprise Python" post, plus the Bootstrap accessibility plugin.
38HN people shared it
15linked it in comments
25stories submitted
917story points
8 years agolast shared
2013people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Node.js at PayPal8 people · 21 points · first shared 2013 · 3 comments on HN
- 2Myths of Enterprise Python5 people · 348 points · first shared 2014 · 250 comments on HN
- 3Isomorphic React Apps with React-Engine3 people · 6 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 4Bootstrap Accessibility Plugin2 people · 4 points · first shared 2014 · 1 comments on HN
- 5Squbs: A New, Reactive Way for PayPal to Build Applications2 people · 2 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 6Homepage2 people · first shared 2015
- 7Cpp py medium.png2 people · first shared 2014
- 8Statistics for Software1 people · 199 points · first shared 2016 · 14 comments on HN
- 9Python by the C side1 people · 145 points · first shared 2016 · 12 comments on HN
- 10Acceptance of FIDO 2.0 accelerates the movement to end passwords1 people · 113 points · first shared 2016 · 92 comments on HN
- 11SuPPort: Evented Python servers1 people · 51 points · first shared 2015 · 12 comments on HN
- 12Benching Microbenchmarks1 people · 6 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 13Nyx – Lightsout Management at PayPal1 people · 6 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 14PayPal goes from online to offline1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 15Profiling Spark Applications Using Flame Graphs1 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
wprapido · 2016-02-26
https://www.toptal.com/blog/
https://www.paypal-engineering.com/
https://www.ebaytechblog.com/
monkmartinez · 2015-05-23
Pretty sure Python is very "enterprise"[1] worthy.
[1] - https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/12/10/10-myths-of-enterprise-p…
bhouston · 2014-11-26
Remember that Paypal did this as well about a year ago.
(This is the best link I can find quickly: https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2013/11/22/node-js-at-paypal/ I am sure there are more.)
eric_bullington · 2014-09-21
>* Learn to use a screenreader and just play with your app/website.
Excellent advice. I'll start testing my sites with a screenreader in addition to IE8 and all other other usual suspects. I also just found a cool toolkit for Bootstrap 3 (I use Bootstrap a lot):
https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/01/28/bootstrap-accessibility-…
xapata · 2018-09-27
"Our most common success story starts with a Java or C++ project slated to take a team of 3-5 developers somewhere between 2-6 months, and ends with a single motivated developer completing the project in 2-6 weeks (or hours, for that matter)."
https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/12/10/10-myths-of-enterprise-p…
yarapavan · 2016-08-16
Paypal Engineering post - https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2016/05/11/squbs-a-new-reactive-way…
Github project page - https://github.com/paypal/squbs
zappo2938 · 2016-06-14
PayPal is a good example of a company that moved from Java to Node.js where the server listens to the client then have it slowly replace code going forward on the back end. [0]
There is a discussion that the bigger issue was getting management to allow them to rebuild all the code and by using Node over Java provided a mechanism to do this. This is touched on in the article.
[0] https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2013/11/22/node-js-at-paypal/
bricss · 2015-08-05
Try to read this -> https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2013/11/22/node-js-at-paypal/
And take a look at this -> http://hapijs.com/
spdy · 2015-03-24
Mainly the boilerplate other languages force upon you.
Whenever i look at Java Code i start to chuckle.
Its so much more information that you need to load into your head.
To quote a picture from the post:
https://www.paypal-engineering.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/1…
And its not like you need static typing everywhere just in some places its better to enforce it for your own sanity. Type hinting looks like a good way to solve this problem in python.
vezzy-fnord · 2014-12-10
I must say, this is one of the most dishonest image macros I've seen in a long time: https://www.paypal-engineering.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/1…
mgmeyers · 2014-09-16
Paypal developed the Node and Java code in parallel.
"Our first adopter of node.js in production wasn’t a minor application; it was our account overview page and one of the most trafficked apps on the website. We decided to go big, but we also mitigated that risk by building the equivalent Java application in parallel." -- https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2013/11/22/node-js-at-paypal/
So, in this case Node wasn't being compared to a legacy system.
pea · 2014-09-03
The documentation also has an aura of "Isn't this all very clever?"
This attitude needs to die. Forever. Why the fuck should I need know about contravariance and parser combinators to write a basic web app? I hope this Scala forking will kill it in Typesafe. It has no place in actually building products.
I notice a lot of difference in quality between libraries released by enterprises and those by users. It's the difference between https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/02/13/hello-newman-a-rest-clie… and Dispatch. We need way more of the former.
jzumbrun · 2014-05-14
Paypal uses node.js extensively. https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2013/11/22/node-js-at-paypal/.
They even open sourced their implementation of it: http://krakenjs.com/
anonyfox · 2013-11-27
https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2013/11/22/node-js-at-paypal/
Seems that node.js outperforms the JVM for WebDev nowadays.
pdevr · 2015-05-19
These are some of the top sites' engineering blogs which I collected over a period of time - I removed those which have already been posted:
Google: http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/ http://google-engtools.blogspot.com/ http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/
YouTube: http://youtube-eng.blogspot.com/
Baidu: http://usa.baidu.com/category/baidutechblog/
Yahoo: http://yahooeng.tumblr.com/ http://yahoodevelopers.tumblr.com/
Wikipedia (closest I could find): https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/
Amazon: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/
Twitter: https://engineering.twitter.com/
eBay: http://www.ebaytechblog.com/
Microsoft: http://microsoftengineering.com
FourSquare: http://engineering.foursquare.com/
Apple (closest): https://developer.apple.com/
Paypal: https://www.paypal-engineering.com/ https://devblog.paypal.com/
Dropbox: https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/
Edit: More (collected from this link: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-top-startup-engineering-blogs):
Yelp: http://engineeringblog.yelp.com/
Quora: http://engineering.quora.com/
Yammer: http://eng.yammer.com/blog/
AirBnB: http://nerds.airbnb.com/
Square: https://corner.squareup.com/
Flickr: http://code.flickr.net/
Soundcloud: https://developers.soundcloud.com/blog/
Cloudera: http://blog.cloudera.com/blog/
Slideshare: http://engineering.slideshare.net/
Heroku: http://engineering.heroku.com/
Pinterest: http://engineering.pinterest.com/