I do too: It's Python and it's several million lines.

Metaphor: you've got three pallets of goods and have hired three trucks to move them. I don't have to know how you wrapped the pallets to know that you brought two too many trucks.

I don't have to know the details of what's included in "Instagram Server" et. al. to make this call (obviously) based on my experience and first-hand knowledge of similar codebases. Frankly, I am kind of disappointed in the pushback I'm getting on this. The only reason to have a multi-million line Python project is for the entertainment of devs, or, worse yet, job security.

Let me put it this way, if the CTO of Instagram showed up here I would be willing to bet US$100,000 that I could reduce the Instagram code by 90% in six months. (Do you think the devs there would appreciate that? Even the one that got laid off as a result?)

If I sound cynical it's only because I've seen this sort of thing for myself. I'm not trying to say that the Instagram devs are dumb or nefarious, this kind of code happens organically and often despite our best efforts. But that code needs a diet. I'm sure of that.

- - - -

edit: In re:

> (And for the record, Linux is ~37 million lines of actual code, Postgres ~2 million, and gcc ~8 million)

So, call it 50M LoC, what's your ratio for Python/C? Meaning, how many lines of C code are replaced, on average, by one line of Python?

And how feature-complete are we talking? POSIX? GCC targets a lot of languages and platforms, eh?

If you were going for an integrated system, like Oberon OS or a Smalltalk IDE, I think my claim is still plausible, eh?

:)