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Show HN: Winglang – A new cloud-oriented programming language

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Re: Show HN: Winglang – A new cloud-oriented programming language

#51

Post by shaiber »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #48

I need an elevator pitch on this (which is currently in my "yet another terraformy thing" mental bucket right now, rightly or wrongly!). I am interested, but when I look at the comparison with Pulumi - https://www.winglang.io/docs/faq/why-a-language , they have 4 lines of code in Wing, but the long Pulumi example sets up permissions. So how did the permissions get set up in Wing? The great thing about Pulumi is if yo…

[I'm on the Wing team] The elevator pitch is that there are things we cannot do with existing languages, such as our inflights and their connection to preflights. This is because that if we used an existing language we'd have to support its legacy code and could not impose new limitations that are needed to execute the inflight system well. It doesn't mean that you cannot come close with existing languages, and there are nice projects that do that, it just means that you cannot go all the way.

The full version is here: https://www.winglang.io/docs/faq/why-a-language

Re: Show HN: Winglang – A new cloud-oriented programming language

#52

Post by shaiber »

intelVISA wrote: post #33
haskellandchill wrote: post #8

> infrastructure and runtime code in one language This is fertile ground for new languages, apparently they call this the "Construct Programming Model" but there appears to be no meat to the theory. If programming language theory was leveraged properly I think they'd really be on to something. See the success of Rust for example. I just did some cursory research and came across a paper on "ABS: A high-level modeling…

Been hacking together a new entrant in this space as well, looking forward to competing :)

:)

Re: Show HN: Winglang – A new cloud-oriented programming language

#53

Post by shaiber »

gnarlouse wrote: post #50

Show me a complex use case. Show me making it more complex and what that costs. Show me the performance benchmarks. Syntax is cool but the older I get the more I care about productivity and speed.

[I'm on the Wing team] Wing is still in early days so we can't show very complex use cases yet, but as time passes developer use to build more and more complex things with it.

Our aim is to improve productivity and speed by enabling developers to develop against a local simulator and visualization console, giving them instant feedback and much shorter iteration cycles. By allowing them to work at a higher abstraction level we aim to reduce complexity, which should also lead to greater productivity.

I hope that in the future, as more developers use Wing, we can show case studies and benchmarks that prove our hypothesis are correct.

Re: Show HN: Winglang – A new cloud-oriented programming language

#54

Post by dang »

Related:

Wing Cloud Raises a $20M Seed to Build a Programming Language for the Cloud - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864816 - July 2023 (6 comments)

Wing: A cloud-oriented programming language – request alpha access - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34051325 - Dec 2022 (148 comments)

Wing programming language: A cloud-oriented programming language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33762969 - Nov 2022 (1 comment)

Re: Show HN: Winglang – A new cloud-oriented programming language

#55

Post by eddd-ddde »

> In existing languages, where there is no way to distinguish between multiple execution phases, it is impossible to naturally represent this idea that an object has methods that can only be executed from within a specific execution phase (or within certain scopes of the program).

What about algebraic effect based languages like koka? Would it make sense to make "inflight" methods and effect and have appropriate effect handlers in scopes like queues or functions?

Re: Show HN: Winglang – A new cloud-oriented programming language

#56

Post by cmgriffing »

I think it's an interesting idea, but I feel like creating a whole new language has too much overhead for adoption. You would need to create a language server and extensions for every editor you want to support.

A language-specific DSL (Pulumi, CDK, etc) just works in any editor that already supports your language.

This is a similar reason to why I dislike most docblock-based infra tools as well. If wing is confident in their ability to maintain editor tooling, more power to them, but it isn't maintenance I would want to manage.

Re: Show HN: Winglang – A new cloud-oriented programming language

#57

Post by Qerub »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #48

I need an elevator pitch on this (which is currently in my "yet another terraformy thing" mental bucket right now, rightly or wrongly!). I am interested, but when I look at the comparison with Pulumi - https://www.winglang.io/docs/faq/why-a-language , they have 4 lines of code in Wing, but the long Pulumi example sets up permissions. So how did the permissions get set up in Wing? The great thing about Pulumi is if yo…

> […] they have 4 lines of code in Wing, but the long Pulumi example sets up permissions. So how did the permissions get set up in Wing?

As it says on the page: "Wing allows developers to write very few lines of code and let the compiler take care of IAM policies and other cloud mechanics."

Basically it auto-generates least-privilege IAM policies.

Re: Show HN: Winglang – A new cloud-oriented programming language

#58

Post by rmbyrro »

ramesh31 wrote: post #45
liotier wrote: post #20

Why a whole language rather than a library that could just as well abstract the cloudy infrastructure and expose its data structures as "first class citizens" ?

> Why a whole language rather than a library that could just as well abstract the cloudy infrastructure and expose its data structures as "first class citizens" ? "Very cool, but what here cannot be done by a library or compiler extension? In existing languages, where there is no way to distinguish between multiple execution phases, it is impossible to naturally represent this idea that an object has methods that can…

I'm not convinced one "cannot" do it with an existing programming language, as the link states.

I agree that the ergonomics of a languaged planned for that is better. But the argument that it's *only* possible with a purposeful language doesn't hold, in my opinion.

Afaik, the AWS CDK allows to express both preflight and inflight in JS, Python, and others, and it works well. Again, the CDK gives an arguably worse experience, but not "impossible"...

Re: Show HN: Winglang – A new cloud-oriented programming language

#60

Post by quickthrower2 »

Qerub wrote: post #57
quickthrower2 wrote: post #48

I need an elevator pitch on this (which is currently in my "yet another terraformy thing" mental bucket right now, rightly or wrongly!). I am interested, but when I look at the comparison with Pulumi - https://www.winglang.io/docs/faq/why-a-language , they have 4 lines of code in Wing, but the long Pulumi example sets up permissions. So how did the permissions get set up in Wing? The great thing about Pulumi is if yo…

> […] they have 4 lines of code in Wing, but the long Pulumi example sets up permissions. So how did the permissions get set up in Wing? As it says on the page: "Wing allows developers to write very few lines of code and let the compiler take care of IAM policies and other cloud mechanics." Basically it auto-generates least-privilege IAM policies.

> Basically it auto-generates least-privilege IAM policies.

Nice!

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