Darklang

Darklang Release 3

(Now that the big bad rewrite is done, we've moved Darklang to monthly releases). Darklang Release 3 contains the changes from June 2022, and has a lot of small wins enabled by the rewrite. It's also the start of us clearing out a lot of the technical debt hidden behind

Darklang Release 2

I'm pleased to announce Darklang Release 2. Release 2 is the first of a new versioning scheme we announced recently. We're doing a "Release" every month, which is just a set of release notes discussing what we shipped over the last month. Release 2 contains all the work we've released

I'm as shocked as you, but the Darklang backend rewrite is actually complete

For the first few years of the life of Darklang, each time we didn't have a library available for our OCaml-based backend, or decided to build a feature in our DB instead of on a proper cloud server, we said "ugh, let's hack this and we can fix it when

Darklang release schedule

I remember when I started at Mozilla, and I first got fully sold on continuous delivery. Mozilla had just released Firefox 4, a long and grueling change where some important CSS features had been ready but unshipped for over 18 months before Firefox 4 actually got out the door, slowing

Try out the new Darklang backend

We're completing our migration to the new backend, which we've previously discussed a [https://blog.darklang.com/darklang-year-in-review-2021/] few [https://blog.darklang.com/hows-the-dark-rewrite-going/] times. Progress is going well, and all https://darklang.com requests (including all editor usage) have been served by the new backend for the last few

Darklang year in review - 2021

We just slipped into March, so this is as good a time as any to review what happened in Darklang in 2021. While the bulk of this post is technical details about the rewrite, I have included some company details at the bottom too. Enjoy! For context, Darklang is an

Darklang Community Meetup

It's 2022, and we're restarting Darklang community meetups! Update: here's the video Original post We've spent all of 2021 [https://github.com/darklang/dark/pulls?q=is%3Apr+closed%3A%3C2022-01-01] doing a rewrite of Darklang's backend. We're nearly done, and now it's time to start thinking about the future.

Backend Featured

Benchmarking F#6 Tasks

A lot of new performance-related stuff landed in the F# world recently. As well as the release of .NET 6, F# 6 was recently released, with built-in, highly-optimized "Resumable Code" Tasks. So let's measure it.

How to fund CaramelLang?

and should it be open source? I'm taking a break from reporting on the progress of Darklang [https://darklang.com] (it's slow but steady [https://github.com/darklang/dark/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Aclosed]) to write up some thoughts on an interesting question. This weekend on Twitter, Leandro Ostera

Optimizing Tasks in F#

I recently went through an optimization exercise. As part of Darklang [http://darklang.com]'s rewrite [https://blog.darklang.com/hows-the-dark-rewrite-going/] in F# [https://blog.darklang.com/new-backend-fsharp/], I needed to make sure that my new code was as fast as the old code - or at least, not horrendously

rewrite Featured

Changes from the Dark rewrite

IF YOU USE DARK IN PRODUCTION, PLEASE READ THIS POST! We are approaching the end of the Dark backend rewrite (see previous updates: 1, 2, 3), which we are now tracking on GitHub. While there are still many tasks to be done, we're making progress and the end is in sight.

f# Featured

How's the Dark rewrite going?

A few months ago I started to rewrite [https://blog.darklang.com/leaving-ocaml/] the Dark backend in F# [https://blog.darklang.com/new-backend-fsharp/]. I'm currently about 60% of the way through the rewrite. All of the major components have been partially transitioned, and it's a question of finishing everything out.

Why Dark didn't choose Rust

Welcome again HN! Dark [https://darklang.com] is a programming language, structured editor, and infrastructure—all in one—whose goal is to make it 100x easier to build backend services. Check out the website [https://darklang.com/], our What is Dark [https://blog.darklang.com/what-is-dark/] post, and How Dark

Dark's new backend will be in F#

Welcome HN! Dark is a programming language, structured editor, and infrastructure—all in one—whose goal is to make it 100x easier to build backend services. Check out the website [https://darklang.com], our What is Dark [https://blog.darklang.com/what-is-dark/] post, and How Dark deploys in 50ms [https:

Leaving OCaml

Part of a 3 part series. Followups on F# [https://blog.darklang.com/new-backend-fsharp/], Rust [https://blog.darklang.com/why-dark-didnt-choose-rust/] I built the first demo of Dark in Python, in about two weeks. A few months later when I started productizing it, I rebuilt it in OCaml. Back in 2017,

Dark v2 Roadmap

tl;dr there's a Dark v2 roadmap [https://roadmap.darklang.com/] now. There are a number of things missing for Dark to be able to have product market fit: * Dark lacks SDKs for 3rd party APIs * Dark lacks a good user account/authentication story While these are the major issues,

benchmarks Featured

FizzBoom benchmark (call for participation)

I've been working recently on a benchmark, to try and see how to get the most performance from the Dark backend. I've reimplemented [https://github.com/darklang/fizzboom] the core of Dark in various languages and web frameworks, notably in OCaml, F# and Rust. As a reminder, Dark is a

Architecture Featured

Adventures in Async

I was very recently the holder of three opinions: * Rust is magic fairy dust that can fix all my problems * Async is magic fairy dust that can fix all my problems * GraphQL is magic fairy dust that can fix all my problems Unsurprisingly, all of these appear to be wrong.

How to add a new feature to Dark

On Saturday, we had our third contributor meetup, this one was organized by Shahriyar Nasir [https://twitter.com/ShahriyarNasir] (thanks Shah!). This time, we did mob coding to add a Tuple type to Dark, and we recorded the whole thing. A tuple looks like this: let x = (somevar, "a string"

rust Featured

First thoughts on Rust vs OCaml

I'm about two weeks into Rust now, so this feels like a good time to write a critique, before I get Stockholm Syndrome'd. My main motivation in learning Rust is that I have to maintain some of Dark's Rust code [https://docs.darklang.com/contributing/if-you-dont-know-our-stack]. There was a recent

Directions and roadmaps

There was a wonderful post just now that I saw on HN as I was procrastinating writing this post. It was by Tim Bray [https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2020/08/09/Service-Fabric-News], and it covered my favorite topic, which is just how batshit cloud services have gotten,

Kubernetes

A fun bug

I'm always interested in stories about Accidental Complexity [https://medium.com/darklang/the-design-of-dark-59f5d38e52d2]—when you waste time dealing with the endless layers of tooling that's required to make a web application today. I'm also super into using Observability (which I'll call to ability to introspect live systems, though that's not

Development

Evolving Dark’s tracing system

One of the things that makes Dark truly unique is what we call "Trace-driven development". The best way to write a HTTP handler in Dark is to start by making a request to the non-existent handler, then: * using the 404s list to create the handler * using the actual trace value

Startup

First Dark contributor meetup

On Friday we had our first contributor meetup. Thirteen folks showed up to a zoom call to discuss how to contribute to Dark. Obviously, the point of the conversation was to get to know each other. We're all hanging out in the #contributors [https://darklang.com/slack-invite] channel, but the

Development

Dark devlog #3: onboarding

An annoying thing about coding is that some days you're on fire, producing masterpieces, knocking down obstacle after obstacle. And some weeks, you're trapped figuring out bugs that ultimately come down to having a semi-colon out of place. Most of the time for me, the difference between the two is