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Make any TypeScript function durable

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Re: Make any TypeScript function durable

#52

Post by Noghartt »

Etheryte wrote: post #49
ngruhn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then it's not valid TypeScript anymore. So all the other tooling breaks: syntax highlighting, LSP, Linter, ...

Looking at the AST [0], this doesn't seem to be the case. Since Typescript already supports decorators in other contexts, it successfully parses everything and identifies the decorator to boot. Since you're working in a preprocessor context anyway, there's a number of options to make all of this work well together. [0] https://ts-ast-viewer.com/#code/GYVwdgxgLglg9mABMOcAUBKRBvAU...

Instead of decorators, it could be just a higher-order function. Which could handle it easily and in any scenario that interchanges between TS/JS.

Re: Make any TypeScript function durable

#54

Post by Etheryte »

Noghartt wrote: post #52
Etheryte wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the AST [0], this doesn't seem to be the case. Since Typescript already supports decorators in other contexts, it successfully parses everything and identifies the decorator to boot. Since you're working in a preprocessor context anyway, there's a number of options to make all of this work well together. [0] https://ts-ast-viewer.com/#code/GYVwdgxgLglg9mABMOcAUBKRBvAU...

Instead of decorators, it could be just a higher-order function. Which could handle it easily and in any scenario that interchanges between TS/JS.

Well yes, that's the sane way anyone would reach for first, but that's clearly not new-age enough by Vercel's standards, so here we are. Similar to the other magic string interactions, all of this is a roundabout way of introducing platform lock-in.

Re: Make any TypeScript function durable

#56

Post by nawgz »

Docs seem really underbaked.

- where does the state and telemetry get stored?

- if something is sleeping for 7 days, and you release a new version in that time, what is invoked?

- how do you configure retries? Looks like it retries forever

And I echo the hatred of the magic strings. Terrible dx

Re: Make any TypeScript function durable

#57

Post by tonyhb »

AgentME wrote: post #36

This seems pretty similar to Cloudflare Workflows ( https://developers.cloudflare.com/workflows/ ), but with code-rewriting to use syntax magic (functions annotated with "use workflow" and "use step") instead of Cloudflare's `step.do` and `step.sleep` function calls. (I think I lightly prefer Cloudflare's model for not relying on a code-rewriting step, partly because I think it's easier for programmers to see what's…

Actually, both Vercel and Cloudflare are based off of the API that we built at https://inngest.com (disclaimer, I'm a founder).

I strongly believe that being obvious about steps with `step.run` is important: it improves o11y, makes things explicit, and you can see transactional boundaries.

Re: Make any TypeScript function durable

#58

Post by qianli_cs »

I'm excited about this because durable workflows are really important for making AI applications production ready :) Disclaimer: I'm working on DBOS, a durable workflow library built on Postgres, which looks complementary to this.

I asked their main developer Dillon about the data/durability layer and also the compilation step. I wonder if adding a "DBOS World" will be feasible. That way, you get Postgres-backed durable workflows, queues, messaging, streams, etc all in one package, while the "use workflow" interface remains the same.

Here is the response from Dillon, and I hope it's useful for the discussion here:

> "The primary datastore is dynamodb and is designed to scale to support tens of thousands of v0 size tenants running hundreds of thousands of concurrent workflows and steps."

> "That being said, you don't need to use Vercel as a backend to use the workflow SDK - we have created a interface for anyone to implements called 'World' that you can use any tech stack for https://github.com/vercel/workflow/blob/main/packages/world/..."

> "you will require a compiler step as that's what picks up 'use workflow' and 'use step` and applies source transformations. The node.js run time limitations only apply to the outer wrapper function w/ `use workflow`"

Re: Make any TypeScript function durable

#59

Post by 1oooqooq »

arresin wrote: post #44
tom1337 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but it's a vercel product and they also pushed the 'use server' and 'use client' directives and probably want to build on them.

Absolutely bizarre decisions.

better then when they try to contribute to react with proper functions like useActionState and ship so many cripling bugs the dev just leave the issues on read.
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