Back in 2005 Ebay was served using single executable binary that had around 100MB. At some point they hit maximal number of functions allowed by compiler.
Back than the best "practice" for large scale services was enterprise Java on VERY expensive Sun server.
I read that and I feel a surge of sympathy for the new guy they hired to work on this thing. How many MONTHS did it take him to even compile it? How many hours of frustration did he have to spend thinking, "I can't even get this thing to build, they're gonna fire me, I need this job or my kids are gonna starve..."
