I never said it wasn't impressive. I was saying that it's sad that this level of incidental complexity is necessary to run, what is for all intents and purposes, a website.
I think you're missing the point by assuming I'm making a statement about Facebook. I'm talking about the fact that this incidental complexity is necessary to do what Facebook does. I don't think my description of it as a website is relevant, it conveys the point that ultimately it's a tragedy that to render obviously simple content to users you are stuck building all this crap to make it work.
Too many people in this thread seem to be projecting that I'm somehow saying this complexity speaks poorly of Facebook's product or engineering. On the contrary, my point was that it's tragic that brilliant minds at Facebook are forced to build all the stuff described in the post just to achieve simple goals like "the page loads quickly", instead of focusing on other problems.
