One person changed the code and collapsed Twitter, Musk was mad: rewrite all!

“Musk is mad!”

Just today, Twitter crashed again, pictures and any links can’t be opened.

According to Musk himself, the reason was just ” a small API change “.

But the consequences are very serious, at least in the eyes of netizens, the scene of the tweet belongs to Aunt Jiang:

And the mood of the people who eat melons is:

It’s not that the netizens are too mean, it’s just that this matter really means giving back .

According to Platformer, the problem is that third-party clients access Twitter’s API. Just at the beginning of February, Musk decided not to open this API for free, but to change to a charging model.

Then the code has to be changed accordingly. However, there is one and only one engineer in charge of this matter.

The Verge said directly and mercilessly: This is all due to Musk’s large layoffs, and Twitter now has too few engineers.

Netizens ridiculed Laman even more:

Apart from daycare kids, there aren’t many people on Twitter left to test.

Internal employees revealed that Musk was really angry. However, Iron Man seems unwilling to take the blame from the outside world, but feels that “Twitter’s code is too fragile”, and once again released cruel words:

Twitter’s code had to be rewritten.

An engineer crashes twitter

Let’s go over this from the beginning.

Twitter netizens who surfed early in the morning suddenly found that the Twitter link could not be opened.

Not only can’t it open, it also tells you that the reason for the error is “Your current API does not include access to this breakpoint”.

Simply translate, Twitter’s own API doesn’t even recognize Twitter…

As for the specific reason, according to Musk, they made some changes to the code of the API, and as a result, the entire Twitter collapsed.

Platformer learned more details from internal employees: this API is the one that Musk announced on February 1 from free to charge. This change directly brought Twitter’s third-party client to the end of life.

The detail that makes people feel outrageous is that internal employees told Platformer that only one SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) engineer was responsible for the Twitter API fee change.

It turned out that the API was “basically broken” after the engineer made a “bad configuration change.” This has paralyzed many of Twitter’s internal tools and public-facing services.

This pissed off Musk, as he said in his own tweet, “Twitter’s code is too fragile for no reason.”

The boss was very angry, so on the internal Slack (communication software), it was instantly crowded with threads of Twitter programmers frantically fighting the fire.

Apparently, Musk thinks Twitter’s code is shit. But whether it is really “for no reason”, there are many different opinions from the outside world.

Previously, some former Twitter employees told the Washington Post that after Musk took over Twitter and drastically laid off employees, Twitter’s code has long been a tightrope walker:

Either error in code or operation is now fatal.

People who stay on Twitter will be overwhelmed and thus more likely to make mistakes.

Twitter that is changing patterns

In fact, this year has just arrived in March, and Musk’s Twitter has collapsed 6 times on a large scale.

First of all, on January 23, some Android users were “backstabbed” and unable to view the watch list, load tweets, and send tweets. Everyone waited about 4 hours before returning to normal.

△ Source 9to5Google

A few days later, on February 8, many users found that they were unable to retweet and send tweets, because they were prompted by the system that “the limit for the number of tweets sent per day was exceeded”, and it took about 1.5 hours to repair.

Then, on February 15, this time for iOS users, the “For You” module failed to load.

Soon, 3 days later, on February 18, the problem became more serious. Even the homepage collapsed, the notification of replying to the message was not reminded, and various other errors were reported all over the screen, making netizens wonder whether Twitter was “Closing doors” (“#TwitterDown” went viral).

Finally, on March 1st, the watchlist and recommendations for you crashed again.

Coupled with the inaccessibility of today’s pictures and links, Twitter’s crash can be described as full of tricks.

——and “routine meals” until everyone has mastered the skill of eating melons.

As Twitter’s own employees:

We’re all numb .

Such as foreign media:

Wait, it is estimated that the next crash is on the way again.

Want to ask why? In the eyes of the outside world, no matter how much Musk throws the pot away, he can’t escape responsibility-who told him to lay off everyone.

As soon as the acquisition was completed last year, Musk started the Twitter 2.0 “extreme hardcore” culture, sending thousands of people away drastically.

Later, a lot of “little moves” came here and there, resulting in the loss of 80% of the original large factory with more than 7,500 employees, leaving only about 1,300 employees.

Among them, there are less than 550 full-time engineers (data from CNBC).

An anonymous engineer on Twitter expressed concern:

Twitter’s code base is huge, and various parts of the site require people who know different programming languages ​​to maintain it. There are barriers between these skills, and it is not easy to “migrate” between sites, so after losing so many people at once, it is difficult for us to train new engineers.

I don’t know if Musk thought about this issue when he was laying off employees frantically.

But maybe I have thought about it, but I still “can’t manage that much”-after all, in addition to highlighting the hard-core culture, the most important thing in his operation is to cut costs and make up for the big hole of 44 billion U.S. dollars.

This is not only layoffs, but also a series of operations such as launching paid certification services, canceling free lunches, firing cleaning staff, defaulting on office building rent and supplier marketing payments.

△ Twitter San Francisco headquarters building, source Frank Schulenburg

There are too many slots, so I won’t expand them one by one.

But, don’t think it’s over.

In the past two days, anonymous employees broke the news to The Insider that Musk even tried to sell office equipment to employees .

In short, Twitter’s gossip continues.

There are also netizens who have a vicious tongue suggestion to put the “unexpected situation” explanatory tweets on the top for a long time.

As for when, this horse-grabbing drama will return to calm, maybe it is when Musk really overthrows and restructures Twitter…

The text and pictures in this article are from Qubit