Under the hood: Building Moments

This post details the technical architecture and development process behind Moments, a photo-sharing app. Key contributions include: 1. Leveraging Facebook's facial recognition technology for accurate photo suggestions. 2. Implementing a client-driven development model with optimistic UI updates to shorten the development-run-test cycle. 3. Designing a data model where the client describes data and the server stores generic blobs, with generated code for type safety. 4. Utilizing a Flux-like architecture for data flow from client cache to UI. 5. Implementing a delta-syncing protocol via GraphQL for efficient data fetching based on user subscriptions to queues. 6. Sharing business logic between iOS and Android apps using C++ with Djinni for Android bindings and lightweight Objective-C wrappers for iOS, optimizing for fast iteration, performance, and native look and feel.