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Show HN: Darklang
151–160 of 261 posts
Re: Show HN: Darklang
#152We have no insight as to what the actual costs of running the infrastructure is.
Dark can basically ask for any numbers they want and you'd have to pay it if you build something sizable on this platform, because moving away would be even more costly.
Re: Show HN: Darklang
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think the fact it maintains the "backend/frontend" separation makes it an awkward product solution imo. When we were thinking about the scope for Dark, we briefly thought about trying to remove all the complexity for frontend too. However, when thinking about how Meteor went, and specifically about how much stuff is going on in the frontend world, we thought it would be simpler to understand if we stopped at the…
Sure I can see that logic. But how many people are writing APIs and either 1) aren't experienced enough to figure out how to write a Lambda function (using a wrapper FaaS like Netlify), or 2) are experienced and are willing to sacrifice the ecosystem you get from open-source/widely adopted languages/frameworks for a marginal amount of convenience over something like Netlify, where they can use whatever language they…
Think instead about a frontend or app developer who wants a simple backend that Just Works and can talk to the outside world painlessly (and there are tons of cases where something like Firebase wouldn't suffice). They're not worried about closed-source or lock-in because that's simply not going to move the needle on their project's success at that stage. It could be huge for that market.
Re: Show HN: Darklang
#154I think the fact it maintains the "backend/frontend" separation makes it an awkward product solution imo. Dark being a proprietary language means most "experienced" or "full-time" software engineers probably won't touch it. You can get pretty close to "deployless" with FaaS services now anyways in whatever language you like. So if this is being targeted toward low-experience/no-experience developers that just want to…
It seems that darklang goes one step further than your average faas: every new code you write is deployed as you write it without any explicit deploy action, but the design of the Lang/IDE ensures new code is always behind a feature flag that makes that new behavior visible only to you until you decide to expand the audience until eventually reaching 100% of the users. You can do that with any language and any server…
That progressive deployment is neat and all, but I'm not convinced that's a problem that actually existed. More importantly, I'm definitely not convinced it's a big enough feature to drive a significant amount of developers to sacrifice the ecosystem benefit from using a popular/open-source language to use a proprietary language that only works on one proprietary cloud host.
Like how is that a 10x improvement on modifying a Lambda function in something like Netlify and clicking "Deploy"? And just "Rollback" if it goes wrong? For most products, which have relatively small user counts, they don't gain much from gradual rollouts.
Re: Show HN: Darklang
#155I applaud the effort for the project because it's really ambitious. The delivery at this point on the other hand makes me a bit skeptical. I've watched the hello world app a few times and my impression is that it relies on lots of convention over configuration (same reason I disliked Rails). The "cards" or files on the canvas look a bit chaotic and their relations are not clear at all what thing triggers which event.…
We have user tested, and a ton of people have built full apps with it. That said, you are correct that it can be a rough experience at times, which is one of the reasons we're in private beta. We wanted to show people what we were working on, warts and all. We are super aware of what you're bringing up. The "cards" especially are not the metaphor we intend to use, just a shortcut to get this in front of people. I hop…
I love the "cards", or at least, the step in that direction.
Just like Apple Numbers, it seems to point to a future paradigm of software development IDE experiences. Something a lot more freeform, flowy, than a traditional file/tabs UI. Some files are 2k lines long, some are 10 lines long; some are text, some are data; it's time we stop cramming everything into the same square file editing box. I think there is room for a lot of innovation here in the UX of developer tools.
Was very excited to see that.
Re: Show HN: Darklang
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think the fact it maintains the "backend/frontend" separation makes it an awkward product solution imo. When we were thinking about the scope for Dark, we briefly thought about trying to remove all the complexity for frontend too. However, when thinking about how Meteor went, and specifically about how much stuff is going on in the frontend world, we thought it would be simpler to understand if we stopped at the…
Sure I can see that logic. But how many people are writing APIs and either 1) aren't experienced enough to figure out how to write a Lambda function (using a wrapper FaaS like Netlify), or 2) are experienced and are willing to sacrifice the ecosystem you get from open-source/widely adopted languages/frameworks for a marginal amount of convenience over something like Netlify, where they can use whatever language they…
> willing to sacrifice the ecosystem you get from open-source/widely adopted languages/frameworks for a marginal amount of convenience over something like Netlify
Obviously, no one is going to leave something that's good for something that's slightly better with a ton of downsides.
So either: 1) Dark is a lot better, like way way way better than what's come before, or 2) it's not, and no-one will use Dark.
We can probably agree that one of these two are true, right?
Re: Show HN: Darklang
#157We have no insight as to what the actual costs of running the infrastructure is. Dark can basically ask for any numbers they want and you'd have to pay it if you build something sizable on this platform, because moving away would be even more costly.
We absolutely want everyone using Dark, so jacking the price like this would be extremely counter productive. If we did that, no-one would start using Dark after that.
Re: Show HN: Darklang
#158We have no insight as to what the actual costs of running the infrastructure is. Dark can basically ask for any numbers they want and you'd have to pay it if you build something sizable on this platform, because moving away would be even more costly.
We absolutely want everyone using Dark, so jacking the price like this would be extremely counter productive. If we did that, no-one would start using Dark after that.
What if the price without jacking was still too much? Disclose the data. Disclose the scalability.
Re: Show HN: Darklang
#159I'm having trouble understanding what this is. Is it supposed to be a competitor to Django/Rails/etc.? or a competitor to ansible? a competitor to docker? Something else? If I have a Django/Django REST Framework app, can I deploy it with Darklang? How is it better than "git push heroku master" for small apps?
It seems like an elm-lang for the backend -- by that, I am strictly referring to its all inclusive nature. You must use their language, build tools, infrastructure, et cetera. It even seems like you must use their in-browser IDE; though it has advantages they demonstrate in the first video in the post, you're sacrificing a _lot_.
Unlike elm-lang, it's not open-source.
So to answer your question, no, you can't deploy a Django app with their platform.
EDIT: It seems like you're even giving up git for their own particular brand of version control that is tailored for their use-case, e.g. seems to include in its scope database migrations.
Re: Show HN: Darklang
#160I really want to try this, but when I put my email address in the website, it's making me fill out what I want to build with it and when I plan to ship and what's my favorite cloud platform...
Holy crap, y'all, I just want to try out your language. It looks cool and all, but why can't I just download the IDE and try it? How are you going to get traction if normal people can't just play around with your language at home?
The tail doesn't wag the dog - I'm not going to recommend this for any projects at work without being able to try it first on my own.