I'm Bernard, the creator of lunatic. Great to see us back on HN and happy to answer any questions!<p>We have been busy pushing out a lot of new stuff. Recently we released a web framework [0] for Rust building on top of lunatic, and a live-view library [1] for crating full stack apps in Rust without JS. For now we are staying close to the Phoenix LiveView implementation, where everything is rendered on the backend and just a diff is sent over websockets to the frontend. But a big advantage of Wasm is that it runs in the browser too, so we hope to leverage this part to move some of the logic directly into the browser, like form checking, or offer a way to create offline-first experiences with the backend running as PWA in a service worker.<p>[0]: <a href="https://github.com/lunatic-solutions/submillisecond" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/lunatic-solutions/submillisecond</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://github.com/lunatic-solutions/submillisecond-live-view" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/lunatic-solutions/submillisecond-live-vie...</a>
Interesting. A huge part of the Erlang value proposition is that the language and runtime are designed to complement each other, and both have significant constraints imposed by the language design.<p>Taking half of that equation, and supporting any language, feels like you’re missing a big part of the benefit.
From the FAQ:<p><i>Each process has its own stack, heap, and even syscalls. If one process fails, it will not affect the rest of the system. This allows you to create very powerful and fault-tolerant abstraction.</i><p><i>This is also true for some other runtimes, but Lunatic goes one step further and makes it possible to use C bindings directly in your app without any fear. If the C code contains any security vulnerabilities or crashes, those issues will only affect the process currently executing the code. The only requirement is that the C code can be compiled to WebAssembly.</i><p>So as I understand it, an Erlang process can "crash" from an Erlang perspective and it's fine (and even encouraged!), but if it crashes from a system perspective (segfault or some such), it takes down all neighbouring processes as well - usually an issue when using foreign libraries.<p>With this set up, one of your erlang processes can segfault and it's fine?<p>I have to admit I'm not across using WASM as a general purpose backend.
Idly dreaming here, without enough understanding to even know how much this makes sense in this context, of:<p>- Erlang-style concurrency (which I haven't tried so don't understand but hear good things about always)<p>- With "platform" level capability security...<p>- ... and language-level capability security<p>- But with a sound and expressive type system like F# or similar<p>- Oh, and garbage collection
Damn, it Wasm runtimes week! haha (Wasmer first, then WasmEdge and now Lunatic!)<p>Good to see Lunatic here, they have been doing great work on their runtime. Props to Bernard and team :)
hang on, what part of the web assembly stack is this competing with exactly? I'm likely just very ignorant on how Web Assembly works but I don't understand exactly how it fits. Do browsers have pluggable hooks for interpreting web assembly that you can swap out for this or smth? Or are we talking about running WebAssembly on the server here?
I wish they had called it something else. I hate to be that guy but you know, it's not that hard to be maybe just a little bit more thoughtful.<p><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17997413" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17997413</a>
Was interested, especially aiming to by language agnostic, then immediately not when I see all communications are exclusively via proprietary platforms.<p>> Choosing proprietary tools and services for your free software project ultimately sends a message to downstream developers and users of your project that freedom of all users—developers included—is not a priority.<p>— Matt Lee<p>This means if Discord or Microsoft (parent of GitHub) or Twitter (I guess) decide to delete or ban your account, you are by proxy banned from the project, Lunatic; this means Lunatic is not in control of the moderation of its community. This also requires all users must give up personal data to the corporations in order to participate. This also further drives a wedge between those that prefer the spirit of open source not just in the style of communication, but those that want it in the tools used to create it as well.<p>This project isn’t the only or first offender, but it’s frustrating seeing this pattern pop up over and over and it needs to be called out every time. People care about their privacy more than ever. Interest in OSS has never been higher.<p>We just witnessed yet another exodus off Twitter for federated plaforms like Mastodon and other platforms because folks don’t want to deal with the whims of megacorporations. Everytime Microsoft or Microsoft GitHub make another questionable move, projects seek refuge on Codeberg/SourceHut/GitLab, or self-hosting. There are a non-negligible amount of folks that don’t want this.