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Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

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Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#91

Post by tigershark »

Previous discussions with answers from the founder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19274083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20394166

From my point of view I don’t think I could inextricably bind my projects to a third party without any recourse in case something on their side changes. Deployment is not really a big deal nowadays, unless you work at a huge scale. But if you are working at that scale I don’t really think that you are eager to commit yourself completely to a small startup.

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#92

Post by abdelhai »

d2mw wrote: post #34
notjesse wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It only sounds maybe 1 step removed from where aws lambda’s are now. You fiddle with the code in the lambda IDE, and submit for deployment. Is this really that much different?

Lambda is the antithesis of frictionless development, most of your life is invested in figuring out the Lambda way to do things, just like App Engine before it "I just need to run this function every 10 minutes" .. (3 blog posts later) .. (1 lunch break later) .. (5 Git commits across 3 repos containing a mix of CloudFormation, CloudWatch and Terraform, 3 new IAM policies and 12 S3 buckets with completely unmemorable…

I'm working on DETA – it abstracts away Lambda/S3/CF/CW/TF. Would you be interested in a quick chat?

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#94

Post by danpalmer »

I'm excited by almost everything about this. I think it could be transformational in some categories of software engineering, but I do have a big concern...

> I think the biggest downside of Dark is definitely that you’re learning a new language...

But this is not it. Learning new languages isn't that hard, and a language so well designed for an ecosystem would likely be a pleasure to use. They are probably giving this as their "big downside" because it's not actually their big downside.

The real big downside is proprietary lock-in. My tools right now are open source, developed in the open, things I can contribute to or at least understand at a fundamental level. "Python" can't go out of business, "Postgres" won't get acquihired and shut down with 30 days notice, and Docker images can run on plenty of hosting providers where there's lots of competition.

While I might bet a company on a new technology I'm not going to bet a company entirely on the whim of a company, who may pivot, get bought, shut down, raise prices, etc. Hosting is the closest I'd get to this level of lock-in, but if that changes I don't have to rewrite all of my code, reproduce business logic, and also rewrite from a high level language like Dark to something that doesn't provide any of the same primitives.

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#95

Post by thecupisblue »

mirekrusin wrote: post #62
notjesse wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It only sounds maybe 1 step removed from where aws lambda’s are now. You fiddle with the code in the lambda IDE, and submit for deployment. Is this really that much different?

I think they actually do much more, they go really deep, it's like your project is huge ast, deployed when saved/compiled/typechecked, it's like big, persisted ast tree; i think this is how they store things - as ast, ast deltas, there are no text files at all. I'm not even sure if you can save your sourcecode if it doesn't compile. Compiled (and "locked") code means deployed code. I don't know how they do deployment…

This is the right approach to do this kind of stuff!

The problem with dark is that it's a language and it's 'hidden and proprietary' - unfortunately, it's too dark to know what it actually is so we can't but assume. I hope I'm wrong and it's less of a language and more of an editor.

I'm working on a similar sideproject where you define your data in a tree-like shape then generate stuff from that with events in between. Kind of AST but more of an Architecture Syntax Tree. The advantages are exactly what you said and dark claims - compiled code is deployed code, otherwise it is just a data tree.

This enables automatic versioning, caching, generation and provides a better UX for development where your types are infered, your tests obvious, your errors are clear as a day and you basically can't fuck up.

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#96

Post by orecht »

avinium wrote: post #86
lazerwalker wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most times I've worked with Lambda (or other competing cloud functions) it's been difficult or infeasible to run my function locally. Which means I can now ONLY test my code manually after a minute or so of deploy time. Separate from anything else about Dark, it appears to fundamentally avoid that problem.

Can't speak for Lambda, but Azure Functions is trivial to run/test locally.

Have you tried localstack (https://github.com/localstack/localstack) to run AWS lambda locally?

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#97

Post by tmikaeld »

jmngomes wrote: post #81
andr wrote: post #42

I've played with some early betas of Dark and I must say being deployless may make a good headline, but there are many more-exciting features. There's visual programming, a concise OCaml-style language, a unique pub-sub mechanism baked right in, and integrated database support. It's a really fresh approach.

> deployless may make a good headline, but there are many more-exciting features. There's visual programming, a concise OCaml-style language, a unique pub-sub mechanism baked right in, and integrated database support. So, everything that is currently delivered in the real world by technologies like OutSystems, which have an enterprise customer base, 1-click deploys, and that you can actually try for free.

"Starting at US$6,250/month (Billed Annually)"

No lunch is free, the small plan is a single dev and max 100 users. Which means, once you go have 101 customers you'll have to charge users at minimum 62,5$/mo just to cover expenses.

I'm not saying that's not cheap for what you get, but the "free" constraints are there.

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#98

Post by Aeolun »

abdelhai wrote: post #92
d2mw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lambda is the antithesis of frictionless development, most of your life is invested in figuring out the Lambda way to do things, just like App Engine before it "I just need to run this function every 10 minutes" .. (3 blog posts later) .. (1 lunch break later) .. (5 Git commits across 3 repos containing a mix of CloudFormation, CloudWatch and Terraform, 3 new IAM policies and 12 S3 buckets with completely unmemorable…

I'm working on DETA – it abstracts away Lambda/S3/CF/CW/TF. Would you be interested in a quick chat?

What is a DETA?

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#99

Post by Aeolun »

d2mw wrote: post #27
mroche wrote: post #18

> If you build your application in Dark’s language inside of Dark’s editor, the reward is you can deploy it automatically on Dark’s infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform without worrying about all of the typical underlying deployment tasks. > ... Ellen Chisa, CEO and co-founder at the company, admits that the Dark approach requires learning to use her company’s toolset, but she says the trade-off is worth it becaus…

> offset the deploying mechanism and control (probably to varying degrees) to a third party that’s dependent on another third party This sounds exactly like working inside any big company, and all that pre-canned infrastructure is a huge benefit to any project It will be interesting to see what they've built in the cold light of day, and whether it delivers. I'm apparently not nearly as pessimistic as others on this…

Any time something is tauted as magic, or there’s an example that is ridiculously simple to deploy, anything beyond that is impossible.

I guess I’n with the pessimistic people. I just cannot see it ending well.

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#100

Post by anm89 »

This seems misguided to me. How do you get people into an ecosystem like this that is totally isolated.

If I'm a startup am I going to choose a language that has no developer base and no experienced devs and no ecosystem, without git, that's closed source so I can avoid hiring some devops manpower?

It seems like only a company with a massive builtin captive audience could pull this off. This makes it feel like they are doing this to be acquired which makes the whole thing even less appealing.

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