Efene with Mariano Guerra

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Created: 7/6/2024 4:07:58 PM
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slash podcast in it to double your signing bonus. Your host today is Tobias Macy. Today, we are interviewing Mariano Guerra. Mariano, could you introduce yourself, please?
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Sure.
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So as you said, I'm Mariano.
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Originally, I'm from Cordo, Argentina.
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Now for the last couple of years, I've been living in Stuttgart in Germany.
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I'm a software engineer,
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and I like
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mainly
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playing with programming languages.
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I like to create them also. I and I also like,
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distributed systems
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and also yeah.
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All all of
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the parts of software like back end, front end, everything in between.
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With the wealth of interesting projects and tools, it's kinda hard to pick a particular niche to focus on because there are just so many interesting areas to explore. It's also interesting
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how many of our guests and how much I've heard about Argentina coming up in reference to various Python communities. And it seems like there's a pretty strong,
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strong community of Python users down in Argentina.
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Yeah. It's, quite big. And Spanish speaking countries is, I don't know if the biggest, but
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a really big 1.
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And also, the name is Python Argentina, but we have members from all over the Spanish speaking countries. So it's not only Argentina in that sense. Okay. And,
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Stuttgart is a bit of a difference from Argentina. I'm just curious if you'd like to share how you ended up over in that neck of the woods.
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Yeah. Sure.
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I came to Germany for the first time, like,
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6 years ago for a scholarship for 6 months.
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I studied here in the 6 months in the Cultural Institute of Technology and then went back. And and in this travel, I met my girlfriend, current girlfriend. She's also from Argentina. And we went back. We got our degree.
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And, yeah, we we liked the traveling
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because while we were here, we travel around.
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Like, 1 nice thing about
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Europe is that it's small and you can cross countries really easy.
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So,
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yeah, I got my degree and I went to work a couple of months to England.
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And when she visited me, she got,
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she applied for some jobs here, and she got a job in Schulgaard. So we I moved. And I I work from home, so
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I can be here and
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enjoy, like, the nice airports and that everything is close by.
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Yeah. Being able to work from home as a developer is definitely very convenient in that respect.
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Yeah.
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So how did you get introduced to Python in the first place?
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I guess it's
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a combination of,
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things.
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When I started with Linux, like, I don't know, 15 years ago, 2000, I installed Red Hat 6.1, I think.
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And Red Hat, I think they still do. They all of the scripts and automation they do, they do it in Python.
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And when I was playing around with Red Hat, because at that point, you had to play around a lot with the software with Linux,
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I saw like every single utility was written in this Python programming language. At that point, I think it was 1.5
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or 2.0 or something like that.
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And then so I,
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I came back and I I just read the the scripts to try to figure out those stuff work, but I didn't know the language. And at that point, I didn't have Internet. And, also, I didn't know anyone who were was a programmer.
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I just had a c book and I started with c.
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And so then I learned assembly
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and then c plus plus and then I started studying at the university
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and then learned Java. But,
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yeah, with Java,
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I got this feeling of, like, complexity.
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And then, like, someone
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sysadmin told me, like, yeah, we do we we use Python for automation. And then other person said, hey, have you checked this
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software? It's made in Python and I will I kept hearing about Python here and there. And a friend of mine
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told me, yeah, come to a meeting. The the labs of the university are presenting the projects they are working on.
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So they presented what they're working on and 1 of them was,
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1 person doing research on this Python programming language.
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So I say, okay, here it is again. So we applied for to work on that group
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and we
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that was, like, 2, 004.
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So we entered and, our job was to pick 1 UI toolkit
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and 1 web framework. We picked GTK at that point and,
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turbo gears.
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Like, we did a presentation of all the alternatives and and
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which 1 was good and which would why we pick the ones we pick.
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So we did, some software for the labs. They manage, like, equipment and stuff, with, turbo gears at that point. And then
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I wanted to
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to try GTK more in-depth.
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So,
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my my brother was using
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Windows at the moment, and he told me, yeah, I would use Linux only if there was a decent,
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MSN
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Messenger client for Linux.
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So I said, I took a weekend and I I made a joke, a really
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long joke.
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I made a really simple
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MSN Messenger client for him, and I say, here you have 1. You now you can switch.
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And he say he start laughing. He he switched, and he started using it and started giving me feedback. And I was, like,
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changing all the things he said really fast to to make it work for him. And at some point, I blogged about it and, like, people really started to use it.
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That became MSN,
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which
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was really popular,
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at that point.
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And, yeah, we we got, like, hundreds of thousands of users,
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like, lot of contributors. It was translated to many languages, then it grew and
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learned to work with, g talk and Facebook Messenger. But then when MSN closed, I just,
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we just left the project,
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die a peaceful death, let's say. Mhmm. The code is still there, and it runs. And it runs on Mac, on Windows, on Linux, and
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everything. But, yeah, the main purpose is not there anymore, so we are not supporting it. So yeah, that's how I got into Python and,
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yeah, and that at some point there, I think when I was at the labs,
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I
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joined Python Argentina, the user group. And, yeah, the the cool thing about Python Argentina first is that the people there are awesome.
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But also that they organize
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a lot of events. They have this idea of,
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federal
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group.
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So they are well, they we. I'm a member also.
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Organized like by days where you can set up
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1 day of talks,
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mainly
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normally in universities
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to
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to talk about Python and try to bring new people. It's to tell
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students mainly or people that are interested in language about Python. So our all introductory talks, and
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there there were a lot of them and then, like, PyCon started happening, I think, in 2009.
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And then, like, PyCon's
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And, yeah. So I stayed, I came for the language and stayed for the community.
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I still
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hang around in the chat helping people, maintaining some projects,
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just because the community is so cool. So, I brought you on today to talk about your language. And actually, I'm gonna pause for a second and just to make sure I'm pronouncing it the right way. So how how do you pronounce the name of your language?
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In it's a play of words. It's a f n e. Okay. It's, because 1 may my first project is MSN.
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Okay.
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And it's how you pronounce in Spanish,
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MSN. Mhmm. And FNA is how you pronounce in Spanish, FN. Mhmm. The 2 letters. Right. So that's the play of words.
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So, f n a is a language that runs on the Beam VM, which for people who aren't familiar is the proper name for the Erlang VM. And in the documentation, you mentioned that it's at least partially inspired by the Zen of Python. I'm wondering if you can explain how that inspiration manifested in some of the process that was involved in the creation of FNA.
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Yeah. Sure.
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So
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about Python, I like, as I said, the community, but also like the mindset.
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There's the thing I like, I don't know who said it, but you should learn languages
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that
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change the way you think about programming.
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And
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in some sense, Python changed the way I think about programming in terms of simplicity.
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Like, that's the main thing I like about Python.
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But also, like, when read when you read the same, there's so much there to learn. When I was, starting, like, I improved a lot of programming with Python. And if you just follow the same when you are thinking about solving a problem,
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like, it's a good guidance.
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And at some point, I was working at some at the work doing Python.
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And someone newer than me at the for in Python was asking me questions, and I kept replying with the send of Python.
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And he said, oh, these Python parameters is, like,
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they talk like send monks. They always reply in this send
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ways. So I I like,
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like, it's
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like a small text that guides you when you are trying to solve a problem. And, like, you see some code and you say this is really complex or really complicated. And then they, like, the same concept you would say this shouldn't be like this or this is too nested and stuff like that.
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So I I really like like the like the idea of the zen of Python. It's a really small text, really nicely written that, like, con concentrates what Python is or what people think Python should be. So I I like to bring these ideas of the of the
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of the SEN
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because I'm not really good at writing SENs or or Haiku or stuff like that. So I just say, okay. Let's adopt everything I like about the Python community instead of trying to come up with some new idea. For example, like, Ruby has this idea of,
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optimized for programmer happiness and which I find really interesting,
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but
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I prefer the simplicity thing of Python. So,
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1
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thing that, keeps coming back on FNA is, not invent anything new. Just pick stuff from other languages that works
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and
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and that I like, of course.
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So I tried I bring stuff I like about the the Python community a lot, something in JavaScript and something from the Erlang language and something also from closure. I I don't know if it you can see it in the code, but,
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like, I some ideas from the closure community are really interesting too.
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And I forgot the second question.
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Just wondering if you can explain some of the process that was involved in the creation of FNA. Some of the concerns that you have to think about when you're designing and building a new programming language. I started,
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it was an accident.
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Like, every single thing I do, like MSNA also,
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I started learning airline
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in
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2006,
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I think.
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No. A little bit late later.
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And,
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I was finding it really hard to find an excuse to use the language. Like, I learned a lot with
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I learned a lot a lot from
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Python while doing this lab project and while doing MSN.
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And I couldn't find 1 excuse to actually use our link for something real to learn about it.
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So
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I was looking for some something to do. And as I said, I like languages, so I did a calculator.
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Like, you enter, like, formulas and it did the calculation for you.
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And
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the it's actually on GitHub.
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Still the decoder, you can go commit by commit seeing how it evolves.
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And at some point, I say, yeah. I could add, like, variables, and I added variables. And then I I said, okay. I can add functions, and I added functions.
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At this point, it was interpreted.
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So I said, let's see if I could,
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compile this to bytecode, actually.
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And
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when I managed to compile to bytecode, I say, okay. There's a language here.
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So
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I was invited to Orland Factory London in 2, 002,
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2010
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to talk about it, and I felt
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this pressure to
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actually have something more,
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interesting to show. So I rewrote it as a language
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from, from scratch. And then, like, there was some interest, so I kept working on it, on and off, since.
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I stopped, at some point when,
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like, Elixir picked up and also because I was really busy working on
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my personal
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startup.
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So when I saw Elixir, I said, okay. There there's,
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the reason I created FNA was to make it easier for
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people coming from mainstream programming languages or scripting languages to come to the Erlang
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ecosystem
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because, at first, airline looks really alien to people in some sense.
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But, so when I saw Elixir, I said, okay. They are doing the job. But at some point, when I started having a lot
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of some no.
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Some
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more free time,
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I saw that there was still an issue on my ideas of what a nice programming language for the Erlang VM
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would be. So I started working on it again for the last
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year, year and a half. And, yeah, it's almost finished. And,
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yeah, I think it's,
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like, there there are, like, 4 main programming languages and then Erlang VM,
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LFE,
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LISP flavored Erlang, Elixir, and FNA.
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And, I forgot about another 1.
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I don't know. It's pronounced Hoksa or Yoxa or I don't know how it is. It's another list.
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And I think,
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each has its own characteristics
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and strengths.
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So that's why I still work on FNA because I I think there there's a place for FNA in the in the ecosystem. I'm not trying to compete against the other languages.
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And so that mostly answered my next question about what your inspiration was. And so, you said it was essentially an accident
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and,
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I like, yeah, I like
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designing programming languages. I have
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a lot
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of hidden failures that are not public, but
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the first 1 was 1 I did, like, I don't know,
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15 years ago or more,
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that compiled straight to assembly and then that was the fan.
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And then in the middle, I did 1 the a scheme that compiled to with the PyPy toolchain. There's a talk around and the code is available online. So, yeah, I I like programming languages and and also I like to think on different points of view. Like, if I have this,
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if I want to focus only on this characteristic, how the programming language would be if I constraints.
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If I have this constraint,
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what programming language can I build with this? If I want something that focus on 1 topic or something. And then f n is 1 that the constraints are
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that it's really easy, really simple, really regular,
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looks
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familiar for people coming from Python, Java script, or,
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like,
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Algol or mainstream
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programming languages.
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And, yeah, that it's easy to read, easy to pick up, like, the readability
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of Python, like, that you read the code. And even if you don't know the syntax, you can see what's going on and stuff like that. That's like the the main focus on the language. And what I try to to focus on f n a is,
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many people complain about the the syntax of Erlang and some other things related to the syntax.
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And you hear the creators of the Erlang language saying but, like,
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Erlang is really simple. The the the syntax is really simple. You can learn it in an a.
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And when I was doing f n and trying to,
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like, do the same ideas of the syntax, but the idea of, Erlang, the language, like, the syntax is pattern matching and case clauses
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and and
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guards. So it's only these 3 things, and you write, like, in English. Like, you have commas and columns and semicolons and columns,
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and,
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that's all you have.
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So I try to
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to extract these ideas they had when they well, they didn't decide the syntax. The syntax was mostly inspired by product. So I say, okay. What if I try to extract what they are trying to say and, like, create a different syntax that may be more approachable for people that are used to these algo languages?
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So that's the current state of f n. It's based on that.
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Note that I say f n because,
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many people say f n too. So I tend to say FN but the correct pronunciation is FN.
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Okay.
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And that also brings up an interesting point because
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in my
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listening to some of the communications from the elixir community,
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I've seen some people mention how
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in some ways, it can be a bit of a disservice having the more familiar syntax because it can kind of hide some of the
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cognitive differences and how you actually approach a problem in Erlang based languages
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because of the more functional and distributed nature. Whereas in languages like Python or Ruby,
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you're generally more
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procedural or procedural or iterative
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in the approach and so that can actually cause some,
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some initial pain when you're trying to write something the same way as you would write it in Python, but it turns out that the way it is actually executed and the way you should be thinking of it is,
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somewhat different. So I'm just curious if you've had that experience or had anybody mention that to you.
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Yeah.
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That's something I keep thinking about, but I have 2 views.
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It's true that,
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like, if
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I could make FNA have
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the syntax
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as closely or as similar as possible to Python, and then you have this problem. Then you say, hey. This I know the syntax. So
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people can think I know the syntax, so I know the semantics of the syntax. I know what happened here.
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So they will write something and it won't work or it will work differently, and they will say, hey. There's something weird here then.
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So I didn't copy this the Python syntax or the JavaScript syntax or any other syntax
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100%
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because you will have that. You you read something and because you know what that does in Python, you think it what it does in in in our line or if and So you have this trap of a familiar a familiar syntax,
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making you think you know what it means.
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But in this case,
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in FNF, like, variables are,
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uppercase, so you there go, like, okay. This is something different.
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And then, like, lowercase words are atoms,
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and it's a plain in documentation. So I fall in that part, I follow the
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the Erlang
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approach, the Erlang syntax. So there you see a difference.
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And f n a is
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functions first. The I don't try to
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make something like objects or classes or object oriented notation, so you won't fall in that trap.
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But on the other hand, like, I try to do it, like,
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its own syntax that you say, okay. This is a different language. This is not Python for the Erlang VM.
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But where you can say, okay. Like the rules and the syntax and my fingers are used to write
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like data, like JSON and functions and the operators like plus and
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the arithmetic operators and or and and the binary operators.
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People are used to read them in a way, so I use that because they mean the same thing.
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But when it comes to, like, the case statement or pattern matching or function definition with different k function clauses and stuff like that,
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I don't reuse
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a similar syntax from another language because I want to make it clear that it's something else.
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But on the other hand, when I was learning Erlang,
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I had this problem that it's the, like, the other side of this argument, which is you are fighting 2 things 2 3 battles at the same time. 1st, you are learning a different semantics. Like, the semantics of the Erlang virtual machine, which are really different from, like, JavaScript,
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or any mutable object oriented or imperative language.
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Then you are fighting the tooling because the tooling in Erlang is quite different.
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It's improving right now,
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but it's different. You have to get used to that. And then you're fighting also the syntax. So your your brain is trying to learn 3 things at the same time. The the syntax of a language that is really different from what you know, The semantics of the language that if you come from, imperative object oriented languages, it's different from what you know.
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And the tooling, which it used to be really bad, but it's getting really good lately. There there's a big push on on tooling lately that's improving. So,
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like,
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you are going
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to, stop learning,
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Erlang and move to something else because you're saying, okay. This this is too much at the same time. I I'm
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like, you didn't it's if you are a Python programmer and you start learning JavaScript,
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many things are the same. Like, objects are like objects, arrays are arrays, mutability is mutability, and stuff like that. Functions are functions, modules are modules. So you can and the syntax is not that different.
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So you can take a lot when you move. And then you start to get this
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moments where you say, okay. This is different. And you can, like you take, like, a mental note of this is not like in Python.
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But you can start with
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there's this saying that you can write Fortran in any language.
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I used to write c in any language
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until I learned Python. And now I try to I used to try to write Python in any language. And then, like I learned closure and
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the the style
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makes you try
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to code in a in a particular way because your your mind
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gets used to thinking that way. My idea with DEFN is to let you bring a lot of the things you already know.
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And, of course, to clarify when something is different. But so you don't have to start from scratch learning everything, like, the syntax, the tooling, and the concepts.
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I want to focus
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on making the tooling and the syntax as approachable as possible and also having a lot of focus on errors and documentation and support and community.
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So, you can focus on learning just the semantics
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of the airline ecosystem, which are the
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the part that is different and the part that makes the airline ecosystem interesting.
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Because,
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Erlang, the language, like, the syntax is you're not going to learn Erlang because of the syntax, or you're not going to learn airline because of the tooling. Your
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the virtual machine allows you to do stuff that it's not as easy in other
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virtual machines or ecosystems.
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So I want to make a language that is so simple and so,
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like, the definite project is not only the compiler and the syntax and the language, but also the landing page, the documentation, the tutorials, the templates, the plugins.
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The FNA project is everything. All of that is a release of the FNA language. It's, when when I say 1.0, it means the language is ready. The compiler is ready. The error messages are clear.
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The templates,
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are all up to date. The the plug ins are up to date. The documentation covers all the topics, and it's, you have, like, tutorials and step by step guides.
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I want to make
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the 1st weeks with the language
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easy so you can focus on learning what's different. This this moment when you say, okay. This is different in Erlang. This is
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what I came from
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for.
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So
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that's my idea with the with the project. And I think the Elixir community is doing the same
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for the people coming from Ruby in some sense
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because the creator creator of Elixir,
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Jose Valim, is a core
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Ruby on Rails committer. So
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I think he's trying to make as easy as possible for the people coming from the Ruby on Rails community
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to land on the airline ecosystem and
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get on their feet and running as quickly and as easy as possible. Of course, if you try to write Ruby on Elixir,
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you will get these moments where you say, okay. This doesn't work like like, what I expected.
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But,
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you are already running a website, a web server doing queries to a database. So you already have something to show and you're happy because you have something running like a web server that replies
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and displays a website.
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And then you say, okay. It's worth
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to learn it and, like, interiorize it because
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it's worth it and I'm already
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so far
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ahead with the language and I'm already productive that it's
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worth learning it. But if you get stuck the 1st day or the 2nd day or you say or you see that in
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the 2nd week, you are still on the hello world and you don't understand anything,
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The chances that you will stay and you won't move to
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another programming language are really big.
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Not big, really low.
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So,
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yeah, from your description of how you're trying to play that balancing act of
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making sure that the syntax is familiar enough, but not so much that it's deceptively familiar.
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Seems like a pretty thin line to walk, but it sounds as though you're doing a pretty good job of that. But another thing you mentioned too is that the tooling
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in the Erlang ecosystem is getting progressively better. And I know that part of that is because Erlang, the language in and of itself, has seen a bit of a recent,
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rise in popularity
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largely because of the scales that a lot of people are trying to operate at. And also, you know, there have been a few
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success stories
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of companies who are using Erlang,
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so for instance, WhatsApp and then also the React database and RabbitMQ
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all being written in Erlang.
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And also, I know that part of the tooling is partly due to the fact that
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Elixir has been gaining a lot of popularity.
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And I know that
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Ruby
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the Ruby community has a pretty good focus on the developer tooling partly to play into their whole philosophy of developer happiness. And
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it seems that 1 of the benefits of writing a language that runs on the beam is because, you know, similar to JVM based languages, all of those different ecosystems can interoperate
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because they all compile to the same byte code. So for instance,
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correct me if I'm wrong, but you can actually take libraries written in Elixir and in Erlang and utilize them directly in Afin a without having to do any
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modifications.
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Yep. That's right.
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Yep. So also
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the the the the Elixir
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here is a difference, between my approach and the Elixir approach, which I I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing, but just difference,
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on the airline side,
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what the Elixir people showed to the airline people let's say is that
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you could actually
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make it really
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like improve programmer happiness on the airline
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virtual machine,
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with not so many programmers because when the Elixir community started, they were a small group of people, really active
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group, but not that many. And they, in like 1 or 2 years, they've created like a package manager and
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a and a release tool and
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a website where you could publish packages and web framework and all this stuff. And they,
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00:29:10.144 --> 00:29:18.085
this is only my idea, but, they showed that if you really want to make it easier, simpler, and more user friendly, you can. It's not
401
00:29:18.510 --> 00:29:20.770
a matter of the size of the community.
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00:29:22.270 --> 00:29:23.570
But at the same time,
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it was already getting better. Basho, the company behind React created rebar that,
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00:29:30.055 --> 00:29:38.650
you may like it or not, but it was it solved the problem. It had some problems also, but it was better than what was there before, which was only make files.
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So some people picked up the work there
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and
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and created river 3, which was
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a rewrite of river
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that solved the problems that people were having.
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And also the there's the Airline MK
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project, which is a more unique style,
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build
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tool. So
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it's it improved
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along with the Elixir people. But then
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there was this back and forth and, like, cross pollination
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where, like,
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since the Elixir people already had a package manager and a package format and some ideas,
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3 bar 3 people said, okay. Let's use that package manager and that format for 4 d airline packages too. So there was this back and forth where all the tools kept improving with the work of both sides and the feedback,
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of both sides.
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So it's
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been a good
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2 or 3 years on the Irvine side in terms of tooling. Still
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a way to go but
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quite nice compared to 3 or 4 years ago.
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And what makes difference with FNA between Elixir? Elixir has mix and hex and
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00:30:53.855 --> 00:30:55.795
some other tool that I may be
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forgetting.
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The idea of FNA is to
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not have, its own tools, but to use,
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all the tools available on the Erlang side. So
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if any works
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out of the box with rebar 3 and with Erlang MK,
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you just have to add the a 1 plug in under configuration
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that comes already
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configured on the templates for the projects I have.
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And you are already running. You can mix airline code with
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f n a code with LFE code and it will work.
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So the idea is to also to not have a standard library.
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Usually,
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elixaries
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has
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some
444
00:31:42.895 --> 00:31:47.955
ideas of their own. It's the language that is the most different from the languages on the Erlang VM.
445
00:31:48.640 --> 00:31:53.780
So it's usual that some people, even when you can use, Erlang libraries directly from
446
00:31:54.320 --> 00:31:56.900
Elixir, it's usual for people to wrap
447
00:31:57.995 --> 00:32:03.055
Erlang libraries to make them more Elixir like. It's what also happens in
448
00:32:03.435 --> 00:32:03.935
Clojure.
449
00:32:04.440 --> 00:32:06.940
You can use Java libraries directly but you
450
00:32:07.240 --> 00:32:15.475
can't find wrappers for almost all the libraries. So, they have like a closure feel. Elixirs tend to wrap to thin wrappers around urban libraries to
451
00:32:15.775 --> 00:32:20.890
have a more Elixir field. The idea of f n is that we don't have a standard library.
452
00:32:21.270 --> 00:32:26.490
Elixir has 1, not that big but has 1. And we don't have f n libraries.
453
00:32:27.095 --> 00:32:31.915
Libraries that are created with f n a can either be used directly from Erlang
454
00:32:32.775 --> 00:32:41.100
or even compiled to Erlang. If you want to write in FNA, but the build or the source code in GitHub and your packet manager be directly
455
00:32:41.400 --> 00:32:42.539
Erlang, it will be.
456
00:32:42.840 --> 00:32:44.059
We are not trying to,
457
00:32:45.034 --> 00:32:46.414
like, create an ecosystem
458
00:32:47.274 --> 00:32:50.815
of tools and libraries inside inside of the Erlang ecosystem.
459
00:32:51.649 --> 00:32:54.389
We reuse everything that's available and try
460
00:32:54.690 --> 00:32:55.190
to
461
00:32:56.529 --> 00:32:58.870
we we are more in that sense, we are more like,
462
00:32:59.570 --> 00:33:00.870
CoffeeScript to JavaScript,
463
00:33:02.485 --> 00:33:05.305
and Elixir will be, like, closer to Java.
464
00:33:05.845 --> 00:33:06.345
They
465
00:33:06.805 --> 00:33:08.985
they are further ahead because,
466
00:33:09.605 --> 00:33:13.840
Elixir also has concepts of their own that they take from the closure
467
00:33:14.779 --> 00:33:20.799
side, which are protocols, where you can implement a protocol for data type and it will work across
468
00:33:21.105 --> 00:33:21.845
all the
469
00:33:22.145 --> 00:33:23.845
data types that implement that protocol,
470
00:33:24.304 --> 00:33:27.605
which is really cool but requires you to do some extra
471
00:33:28.065 --> 00:33:35.610
compiling magic in the middle like Scala and closure have to do. But if any, it's just straight compiling. You can
472
00:33:36.390 --> 00:33:40.295
each line of f n a is 1 line of Erlang and there's no overhead. There's
473
00:33:41.175 --> 00:33:43.515
no intermediate generation of code
474
00:33:43.815 --> 00:33:47.035
behind the scenes that does something extra. It's just straight
475
00:33:49.130 --> 00:33:49.630
Erlang.
476
00:33:50.170 --> 00:33:51.309
You can even compile
477
00:33:51.610 --> 00:33:53.870
FNA code instead of FICO to Erlang.
478
00:33:54.170 --> 00:33:56.750
So it in that case, it's more like a coffee script.
479
00:33:57.985 --> 00:34:04.005
That's interesting. I didn't realize that you could, so easily transpile if any to the Erlang syntax.
480
00:34:04.630 --> 00:34:14.010
And, it's also an interesting standpoint to like you said not have a standard library and not try to build up a community specifically of FNA users just to
481
00:34:14.375 --> 00:34:28.869
basically provide a bridge to people who wanna come into the Erlang ecosystem to make that initial step a little friendlier and then maybe either continue using FNA and stay there or just move further and just use Erlang directly. So
482
00:34:29.555 --> 00:34:31.795
Exactly. As I said at some point,
483
00:34:32.355 --> 00:34:38.694
I don't care if, FNA is a gateway drug in some sense where you start with FNA and then realize that,
484
00:34:39.039 --> 00:34:41.140
yeah, now I understand Erlang because,
485
00:34:41.599 --> 00:34:45.059
it's 1 to 1. Now only I have to learn the syntax,
486
00:34:45.359 --> 00:34:46.259
and I can
487
00:34:46.720 --> 00:34:47.220
stop
488
00:34:47.905 --> 00:34:52.725
using this plug in, and I can use straight Erlang. I I really don't care. It's
489
00:34:53.585 --> 00:34:54.085
my
490
00:34:54.785 --> 00:34:59.550
way of helping the community get bigger and more more diverse
491
00:35:00.810 --> 00:35:04.110
by trying to bring these people from Python and JavaScript
492
00:35:04.410 --> 00:35:04.910
that
493
00:35:05.465 --> 00:35:06.125
are afraid,
494
00:35:09.465 --> 00:35:10.925
maybe, when they see airline.
495
00:35:11.625 --> 00:35:14.490
So that's that's the whole idea. And try not
496
00:35:14.790 --> 00:35:16.330
to duplicate work because
497
00:35:18.230 --> 00:35:19.530
I'm not trying to,
498
00:35:20.605 --> 00:35:30.530
in that in that sense, I'm not trying to create a 3rd community, like the the Erlang guys, the Elixir guys, and the FEN guys. I'm not trying to do that. I think the Elixir people are
499
00:35:30.990 --> 00:35:32.050
doing a great job
500
00:35:32.590 --> 00:35:37.570
at creating a language that has its own ideas and its own its own community. And
501
00:35:37.995 --> 00:35:43.295
so, I'm not trying to create a 3rd group. I'm just on the airline side of things.
502
00:35:44.795 --> 00:35:55.260
And, in a couple points, you've alluded to some of the benefits that the Beam provides that are hard to replicate in languages like Python. So, I'm curious if you can
503
00:35:55.585 --> 00:36:05.125
give a bit more detail about what some of those benefits are and why somebody why why a Python developer might want to consider using FNA or Elixir to take advantage of them.
504
00:36:06.910 --> 00:36:07.410
Yeah.
505
00:36:09.150 --> 00:36:11.410
The reason I came for is,
506
00:36:11.950 --> 00:36:16.205
as everyone may think, and that was actually the case concurrency.
507
00:36:17.705 --> 00:36:18.205
But
508
00:36:18.505 --> 00:36:20.285
when you get in for the concurrency,
509
00:36:20.665 --> 00:36:22.670
you stay for the fault tolerance.
510
00:36:23.290 --> 00:36:27.390
So there's some people that say I came for the concurrency and stayed for the fault tolerance
511
00:36:27.930 --> 00:36:30.345
because that's the most interesting
512
00:36:30.805 --> 00:36:31.305
part.
513
00:36:31.685 --> 00:36:34.345
Of course, the scalability and the concurrency is great,
514
00:36:35.205 --> 00:36:37.625
but default tolerance is the thing
515
00:36:39.109 --> 00:36:40.250
other than immutability,
516
00:36:41.190 --> 00:36:43.109
the thing that makes change
517
00:36:43.510 --> 00:36:47.775
that Erlang change your way of seeing the programming world.
518
00:36:49.035 --> 00:36:55.295
The concept of actors and supervisors and message passing and supervisor trees and
519
00:36:57.280 --> 00:36:57.780
crash
520
00:36:58.800 --> 00:37:00.260
early and often and
521
00:37:01.840 --> 00:37:07.525
a supervisor will pick up the crash and will restart and you have this supervisor, and
522
00:37:08.305 --> 00:37:09.444
the restart policies,
523
00:37:10.305 --> 00:37:15.365
and everything, like, starts crashing because there's some problem. And, then it, the supervisors
524
00:37:15.920 --> 00:37:19.140
restart everything from unknown state and you get everything back.
525
00:37:19.680 --> 00:37:22.660
Because there there's even a paper that says, like, 99 of
526
00:37:22.960 --> 00:37:37.349
the server bugs are transient. Like, if you retry it enough times, they they go away. And if they don't go away, then you should keep crashing until you reach the top supervisor and if it keeps crashing then you crash the VM because there's nothing to do.
527
00:37:37.650 --> 00:37:38.950
But all this idea
528
00:37:39.250 --> 00:37:40.790
and not only the idea
529
00:37:41.165 --> 00:37:42.925
as a pattern, like, you
530
00:37:44.285 --> 00:37:47.744
maybe you could create this in other in other languages,
531
00:37:48.285 --> 00:37:51.410
but the VM is created for that.
532
00:37:51.870 --> 00:37:52.370
So,
533
00:37:53.230 --> 00:37:53.730
immutability
534
00:37:54.990 --> 00:37:56.210
helps because
535
00:37:58.045 --> 00:38:04.225
1 actor cannot change something in another actor like this spooky action as a dis at a distance that you have on
536
00:38:05.550 --> 00:38:08.690
on mutable languages, which are, like, almost all of them.
537
00:38:09.390 --> 00:38:19.720
And also message passing, actors, you cannot inspect what's inside an actor and you can only modify it by sending messages and you can only send messages if you have the process ID. And
538
00:38:20.140 --> 00:38:20.640
and
539
00:38:21.060 --> 00:38:21.560
also,
540
00:38:23.060 --> 00:38:23.800
each process,
541
00:38:25.460 --> 00:38:26.280
since it's
542
00:38:26.580 --> 00:38:28.680
receiving messages from a message box,
543
00:38:29.755 --> 00:38:38.255
inside the process, it's acting serially. So it takes a message, handles it, then takes the next message and handles it. So inside the process, you are not thinking about concurrency,
544
00:38:38.580 --> 00:38:44.920
But when you start to assemble all these process hierarchies and networks of processes sending messages to processes,
545
00:38:45.220 --> 00:38:48.355
you get the concurrency for free because the the VM does
546
00:38:49.135 --> 00:38:56.195
preemptive scheduling of processes for you, and you have, like, lightweight threads. So lightweight processes, actually. So you don't have to think
547
00:38:56.940 --> 00:39:03.920
about how many are these too many processes I'm spawning. You don't care because you can spawn millions of processes without problem,
548
00:39:04.725 --> 00:39:05.625
which there's,
549
00:39:06.165 --> 00:39:08.105
I think the creator of Erlang
550
00:39:08.485 --> 00:39:16.530
said. When he was created, Erlang said, imagine that your programming Python and I, and I say to you, you can only have a a 1, 000 objects.
551
00:39:17.390 --> 00:39:19.410
Like, how your way of designing
552
00:39:20.030 --> 00:39:35.339
the program will change if you could only create a 1, 000 objects. It's the same with all the programming languages in terms terms of concurrency. You can only create, I don't know, some thousands of threads we have before you start having problems. In our line, you can create millions and you don't have
553
00:39:36.040 --> 00:39:42.380
these problems. And also the VM since it does the preemptive scheduling, 1 process cannot affect the
554
00:39:42.935 --> 00:39:45.595
other process because if it takes too long to execute
555
00:39:45.895 --> 00:39:47.755
some message handling, it will be,
556
00:39:48.695 --> 00:39:50.235
sent to the back of the queue.
557
00:39:51.170 --> 00:39:57.030
So that's nice also. And the fact that the GC on on Erlang is per process.
558
00:39:57.330 --> 00:39:59.510
So each process has a really small
559
00:39:59.970 --> 00:40:00.470
heap
560
00:40:00.994 --> 00:40:09.655
and it grows as needed. And each process does garbage collection on its own heap. So you don't have a global unique huge heap,
561
00:40:10.310 --> 00:40:14.090
that will do stop the world to garbage collect gigabytes of data.
562
00:40:14.470 --> 00:40:16.170
So that's cool also.
563
00:40:16.710 --> 00:40:25.645
So these all these ideas are the ones that you don't when someone says Erlang, they say, yeah, like concurrency and scalability because of the concurrency.
564
00:40:26.280 --> 00:40:27.420
But all of these
565
00:40:27.800 --> 00:40:31.099
details, also 1 that is really interesting is
566
00:40:32.040 --> 00:40:33.099
the degree of
567
00:40:33.755 --> 00:40:36.815
introspection. Run time introspection, you can do on
568
00:40:37.115 --> 00:40:41.295
on an running system. You can connect via shell to a running system,
569
00:40:41.700 --> 00:40:45.160
even via SSH if you want. There there's a blog post over there.
570
00:40:45.460 --> 00:40:54.265
And start, like, inspecting and see the live process tree, and you can even stop processes and inspect what they have inside and all this stuff,
571
00:40:54.725 --> 00:40:58.265
which is really useful when you're running a a really complex system.
572
00:40:58.880 --> 00:40:59.380
And
573
00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:01.059
finally, 2,
574
00:41:01.599 --> 00:41:03.440
since you're doing all these message passings
575
00:41:03.760 --> 00:41:06.500
passing and you only have a process ID,
576
00:41:07.279 --> 00:41:16.305
to send a message, It doesn't matter if the process is on this computer, on this core, on another core, or another another computer on the data center. So the the scalability
577
00:41:17.130 --> 00:41:21.790
from 1 core to 5th 16 cores and from 1 server to
578
00:41:22.970 --> 00:41:23.870
15 servers,
579
00:41:25.341 --> 00:41:25.895
is, like,
580
00:41:26.275 --> 00:41:27.974
use use the same instructions.
581
00:41:28.994 --> 00:41:32.100
And 1 I didn't mention that many people,
582
00:41:32.580 --> 00:41:35.240
think it will be more interesting,
583
00:41:36.100 --> 00:41:38.120
and I I thought so, but
584
00:41:38.580 --> 00:41:41.964
I I still didn't make so much use of it. It's a hot call reloading.
585
00:41:43.224 --> 00:41:44.765
Since you have all this
586
00:41:45.145 --> 00:41:45.645
immutable
587
00:41:46.505 --> 00:41:48.444
thing and no global
588
00:41:48.825 --> 00:41:52.150
heap, You compile a new version of a module. You
589
00:41:52.690 --> 00:41:53.990
you reload it, and
590
00:41:54.450 --> 00:41:57.430
the code with the will reload, of course, with the procedure.
591
00:41:58.355 --> 00:42:00.934
It's really useful if you want to have a high availability,
592
00:42:01.795 --> 00:42:03.655
but if you can, like,
593
00:42:04.355 --> 00:42:08.780
you have to do some steps to achieve this. You have to write code to handle the migration
594
00:42:09.320 --> 00:42:11.580
from 1 version to a next version
595
00:42:11.960 --> 00:42:16.325
and the migration back from and the next version to the version before in case
596
00:42:16.625 --> 00:42:17.125
the
597
00:42:17.505 --> 00:42:18.644
upgrade fails. So
598
00:42:19.664 --> 00:42:20.884
it's there, but
599
00:42:21.184 --> 00:42:26.770
people normally only use it when when it's really needed, when you are running stuff like WhatsApp or
600
00:42:27.550 --> 00:42:32.130
or React or stuff like that. It's not something you you say, okay. I will start a,
601
00:42:32.704 --> 00:42:33.204
like,
602
00:42:33.505 --> 00:42:34.244
a a blog
603
00:42:34.545 --> 00:42:40.244
with the back end in Erlang. I will do hot call reloading because you can restart. It's easier to restart at the beginning.
604
00:42:41.950 --> 00:42:42.450
Yeah.
605
00:42:42.829 --> 00:42:47.410
Speaking to your point about fault tolerance, I can't remember exactly the company. I think it might have been,
606
00:42:47.710 --> 00:42:52.455
I wanna say Sony's Ericsson, but there is some, yeah, there is some company who
607
00:42:53.155 --> 00:42:56.855
using Erlang was able to achieve 9 nines of uptime
608
00:42:57.155 --> 00:42:59.494
because of the Erlang VM and its reliability.
609
00:43:00.790 --> 00:43:02.810
Yeah. It's Ericsson in the
610
00:43:03.270 --> 00:43:04.090
they created
611
00:43:04.950 --> 00:43:06.330
a telephone switch,
612
00:43:07.270 --> 00:43:09.450
a hardware switch using Erlang.
613
00:43:09.985 --> 00:43:11.925
And there every second,
614
00:43:12.465 --> 00:43:13.505
you are not,
615
00:43:13.985 --> 00:43:17.285
handling calls, you get a fine because it's regulated.
616
00:43:17.900 --> 00:43:20.080
So, yeah, they achieved on on that switch,
617
00:43:20.460 --> 00:43:21.680
9 nines of availability.
618
00:43:22.380 --> 00:43:22.880
And,
619
00:43:24.540 --> 00:43:26.800
also, Erlang, that that's maybe the
620
00:43:27.165 --> 00:43:30.865
point where it shines. It's used in these high availability,
621
00:43:32.205 --> 00:43:33.025
high scalability
622
00:43:33.325 --> 00:43:33.825
services.
623
00:43:34.270 --> 00:43:36.130
That's why you can see like databases
624
00:43:36.430 --> 00:43:40.609
and message queues and like MQTT brokers and
625
00:43:40.910 --> 00:43:41.565
all these
626
00:43:41.964 --> 00:43:42.464
backbones.
627
00:43:43.405 --> 00:43:44.224
Also, Amazon,
628
00:43:45.484 --> 00:43:47.265
s 3 is done with Erlang.
629
00:43:48.365 --> 00:43:49.585
All these, like,
630
00:43:49.885 --> 00:43:50.944
backbone services
631
00:43:52.150 --> 00:43:54.490
that you would expect are highly available
632
00:43:55.510 --> 00:44:00.410
to be written in Ireland because of of these, these concepts. And the way of
633
00:44:00.994 --> 00:44:04.775
approaching and solving a problem that, allow you to have these properties.
634
00:44:06.275 --> 00:44:17.210
Yeah. It's definitely a very interesting ecosystem and 1 that I continue to want to find a reason to program in, but I have not have not yet found the time and the motivation to do so.
635
00:44:18.375 --> 00:44:25.095
So I understand that you are also experimenting with another language implementation that runs on the beam. I'm wondering if you can,
636
00:44:25.494 --> 00:44:31.740
give a brief description of what that is and how it compares to FNA and what inspired you to start that project.
637
00:44:33.400 --> 00:44:33.900
Sure.
638
00:44:34.440 --> 00:44:35.580
So as I said,
639
00:44:35.925 --> 00:44:38.425
FNA is a conservative language.
640
00:44:39.605 --> 00:44:41.145
It tries to be simple.
641
00:44:44.470 --> 00:44:49.850
Not I don't want to invent anything new with the language, with the tools, with anything, with the syntax.
642
00:44:50.310 --> 00:45:01.395
It tries to be really conservative. But as I was developing FNA, I had all these crazy ideas, and I had, like, a backlog in my mind of all these crazy ideas I wanted to try in a language.
643
00:45:02.180 --> 00:45:03.720
And, at some point, I say, okay,
644
00:45:04.180 --> 00:45:07.240
what if I bring all these crazy ideas into a language?
645
00:45:08.180 --> 00:45:10.520
Of course, that won't be a fan because it will
646
00:45:11.185 --> 00:45:12.565
turn into a crazy language.
647
00:45:13.265 --> 00:45:15.525
So 1 day, I had a really long,
648
00:45:16.065 --> 00:45:16.885
wait times,
649
00:45:17.425 --> 00:45:18.245
on airports.
650
00:45:18.660 --> 00:45:21.560
Like, I had, I don't know, half a day
651
00:45:21.940 --> 00:45:23.400
coming back to Germany.
652
00:45:25.460 --> 00:45:26.680
So I said, okay.
653
00:45:27.045 --> 00:45:33.385
Let's try these ideas and see if they all together fit into 1 language that makes some sense.
654
00:45:33.980 --> 00:45:35.680
And that began became
655
00:45:36.380 --> 00:45:36.880
Interfix.
656
00:45:37.900 --> 00:45:40.160
It's an experimental programming language.
657
00:45:40.620 --> 00:45:43.505
Experimental in the sense that I try some things that,
658
00:45:43.905 --> 00:45:48.244
may not be good ideas, but I wanted to try them in, in 1 language.
659
00:45:49.480 --> 00:45:52.700
It's experimental in that sense, but in the sense of,
660
00:45:53.080 --> 00:45:58.445
if it works, yeah, it compiles and it it may be a little bit behind
661
00:45:58.825 --> 00:46:00.765
FNA in terms of, stability.
662
00:46:01.305 --> 00:46:06.045
But, I've tried it, and I've written some code. And there's people that have written code in interface.
663
00:46:06.640 --> 00:46:07.140
And,
664
00:46:07.920 --> 00:46:08.820
yeah, it works.
665
00:46:10.400 --> 00:46:10.900
I
666
00:46:11.600 --> 00:46:13.095
I keep Interfix as
667
00:46:13.974 --> 00:46:17.994
a place or a project for people that want to experiment with
668
00:46:18.775 --> 00:46:20.215
alternative ways of,
669
00:46:20.535 --> 00:46:21.515
writing programs,
670
00:46:23.070 --> 00:46:25.650
but always in the syntax part.
671
00:46:26.030 --> 00:46:29.250
It compiles it compiles also straight to Erlang,
672
00:46:30.675 --> 00:46:32.055
bytecode and can
673
00:46:32.675 --> 00:46:38.694
cross compile or transpile to Erlang source code. So you can see what what the meaning of the thing is. And,
674
00:46:40.180 --> 00:46:41.940
yeah, there's no, it's,
675
00:46:42.340 --> 00:46:43.640
there's no overhead.
676
00:46:44.180 --> 00:46:46.200
Like, each feature of the languages
677
00:46:47.415 --> 00:46:50.455
compiles directly to a feature of the Erlang language. It's,
678
00:46:50.855 --> 00:46:54.395
let's say, it's a crazy syntax that compiles to Erlang Bickel.
679
00:46:56.040 --> 00:46:58.359
But I, like, I really like,
680
00:46:58.839 --> 00:47:00.920
what I really like about the language is that,
681
00:47:01.480 --> 00:47:05.365
when you read some examples, it looks like it can't compile to something.
682
00:47:05.984 --> 00:47:07.045
That can't be
683
00:47:07.425 --> 00:47:09.685
because my my idea was to
684
00:47:10.385 --> 00:47:10.885
use
685
00:47:11.425 --> 00:47:11.925
as
686
00:47:12.410 --> 00:47:15.310
the least amount of punctuation as possible without
687
00:47:15.850 --> 00:47:18.750
resorting to the list list trick of using parentheses.
688
00:47:19.345 --> 00:47:19.845
So
689
00:47:20.224 --> 00:47:22.404
it's like a Lisp without the parenthesis.
690
00:47:23.105 --> 00:47:23.605
And,
691
00:47:24.305 --> 00:47:26.244
the language is quite interesting.
692
00:47:27.120 --> 00:47:29.300
I suggest you to check the examples
693
00:47:29.760 --> 00:47:31.860
on the readme and the examples
694
00:47:32.640 --> 00:47:34.030
folder to see
695
00:47:35.475 --> 00:47:36.935
what it looks like. And,
696
00:47:37.475 --> 00:47:40.295
I can assure you that all the examples compile to something.
697
00:47:40.755 --> 00:47:41.335
Of course,
698
00:47:41.955 --> 00:47:49.000
some source codes, the the the thing that the program is actually doing are not useful, but, everything compiles to to
699
00:47:50.099 --> 00:47:52.279
to actual code that can run.
700
00:47:54.585 --> 00:47:55.085
And,
701
00:47:55.625 --> 00:48:06.040
just bringing it back around a bit. So there are definitely plenty of benefits to using the Erlang VM VM and the Erlang ecosystem. I'm wondering if there are any cases that you can think of where
702
00:48:06.580 --> 00:48:11.075
the where you would not wanna use Erlang or an Erlang language and would
703
00:48:11.635 --> 00:48:14.935
rather use Python because it's either easier or more effective.
704
00:48:17.234 --> 00:48:19.494
Yeah. There are. If you are doing,
705
00:48:22.100 --> 00:48:25.080
like, something where Python shines where which is
706
00:48:25.540 --> 00:48:26.520
scientific computing,
707
00:48:26.900 --> 00:48:28.200
numeric stuff,
708
00:48:28.580 --> 00:48:29.960
don't use Erlang because
709
00:48:30.445 --> 00:48:30.945
in
710
00:48:32.045 --> 00:48:35.425
the math part, it's slow, so it doesn't make sense. And, also,
711
00:48:35.805 --> 00:48:41.259
there are some algorithms that are much more efficient if you use, mutation.
712
00:48:41.559 --> 00:48:50.275
The you you create an array and sort it in place, replacing the the values that are in the array. If you are using a mutable algorithm, you will be creating
713
00:48:51.055 --> 00:48:51.555
1
714
00:48:52.494 --> 00:48:53.395
new object
715
00:48:54.015 --> 00:48:56.550
per change. Of course, if you use something like,
716
00:48:57.510 --> 00:49:03.775
structural sharing, you are not creating that much new memory, but it's slower, much slower. So in the part of,
717
00:49:04.655 --> 00:49:05.155
numerics
718
00:49:05.535 --> 00:49:11.875
and, like, scientific computing and calculations and machine learning and all that stuff, don't use it.
719
00:49:13.329 --> 00:49:14.790
And, also, for scripting,
720
00:49:15.410 --> 00:49:17.349
even if you could, there's no reason,
721
00:49:17.810 --> 00:49:25.815
I think, because Python and I think if I have to write a script, I would write it in Python. I use Python for
722
00:49:26.915 --> 00:49:27.815
Glue, basically.
723
00:49:28.595 --> 00:49:31.015
Or if I have to do something quick,
724
00:49:31.470 --> 00:49:32.370
I use Python.
725
00:49:33.870 --> 00:49:35.330
Erlang is more if you want
726
00:49:35.710 --> 00:49:42.035
to take advantage of the of the Erlang as you said and play to the strengths of the of the platform. Platform.
727
00:49:43.055 --> 00:49:50.675
Maybe there there are people doing, like, Erlang back ends and then putting Ruby on Rails on front or Python on front with Django
728
00:49:51.200 --> 00:49:51.940
to do
729
00:49:52.320 --> 00:49:55.220
the the front end of the back end in some sense,
730
00:49:55.920 --> 00:49:57.380
on that language those languages.
731
00:49:58.320 --> 00:50:01.625
Even if you can do it in our language, you could if you wanted. But
732
00:50:02.325 --> 00:50:05.065
as I said, for scripting, for numerical stuff,
733
00:50:05.605 --> 00:50:09.065
I think you shouldn't use. And if you want to create a desktop application,
734
00:50:10.440 --> 00:50:12.060
it I wouldn't use Erlang either.
735
00:50:12.760 --> 00:50:15.020
Of course, for websites and for web services,
736
00:50:15.400 --> 00:50:17.020
it's great. And for
737
00:50:17.595 --> 00:50:18.255
I say, backbone.
738
00:50:18.714 --> 00:50:20.174
I don't know about, like, databases
739
00:50:20.635 --> 00:50:22.654
and message queues and all that is great.
740
00:50:23.035 --> 00:50:25.934
But for desktop applications, for scripts, for,
741
00:50:26.960 --> 00:50:30.260
and for numerical stuff, I wouldn't recommend it.
742
00:50:32.160 --> 00:50:32.660
So,
743
00:50:33.200 --> 00:50:38.955
are there any questions that I didn't ask that you think I should have or anything else that you'd like to bring up before we move on?
744
00:50:40.935 --> 00:50:42.555
I cannot think of 1.
745
00:50:43.335 --> 00:50:44.380
Oh, that's it.
746
00:50:44.859 --> 00:50:57.525
So for anybody who wants to get in touch with you or follow what you're up to, what would be the best way for them to do that? Or anybody if they're asking for advice on, how to get involved with FNA and the Erlang ecosystem?
747
00:51:00.520 --> 00:51:01.160
You can
748
00:51:02.440 --> 00:51:06.915
I guess you will write this on the notes because I won't spell it? I'm warrenoguera
749
00:51:07.215 --> 00:51:08.435
on Twitter. I'm
750
00:51:08.815 --> 00:51:09.315
marionoguera
751
00:51:10.495 --> 00:51:11.155
in GitHub,
752
00:51:12.095 --> 00:51:12.595
marionoguera.org
753
00:51:13.375 --> 00:51:14.275
is my blog.
754
00:51:15.299 --> 00:51:20.520
Those will be the, like, the 3 entry points. And for if you're interested particularly on fna,
755
00:51:21.460 --> 00:51:22.599
go to fna.org
756
00:51:23.605 --> 00:51:26.185
and first contact me directly and,
757
00:51:26.645 --> 00:51:28.265
so I can help you because,
758
00:51:30.005 --> 00:51:31.625
I've been working on the language,
759
00:51:31.925 --> 00:51:47.745
for the last year and a half half to, have a 1 beta. Like, the first release will be 1 0 beta because the language is almost finished or finished, actually. But, of course, I I don't I don't want to come out with a 1.0 because there may be problems.
760
00:51:49.300 --> 00:52:02.285
The only reason I don't do the release is because I want to improve the documentation, and I want to do the release when I I have free time to support the people that come. But if you want to be an early adopter and help me, like, polish the product,
761
00:52:02.985 --> 00:52:06.860
before the release, just contact me on those channels and
762
00:52:07.240 --> 00:52:12.620
I will gladly help you to get started with the FNA and with any question you may have.
763
00:52:14.775 --> 00:52:18.315
Excellent. So with that, we will move on into the picks.
764
00:52:18.615 --> 00:52:22.075
And for my picks today, my first 1 is
765
00:52:22.970 --> 00:52:29.950
a project that I came across recently because I just started a new job and got a new computer for it and
766
00:52:30.415 --> 00:52:30.915
needed
767
00:52:31.295 --> 00:52:41.970
to set up my dot files all over again and decided to to take the opportunity to see if there's a better way that I could go about it than what I was currently using. And so I found a project called dotfiles,
768
00:52:42.750 --> 00:52:43.730
spelled d0tphiles.
769
00:52:45.950 --> 00:52:47.970
And it's just a collection of
770
00:52:48.915 --> 00:52:54.375
dot files for various things such as zsh and bash and your Python RC and,
771
00:52:54.835 --> 00:52:57.460
git config and all of that kind of stuff.
772
00:52:57.840 --> 00:53:07.805
And it's a really good starting point. A lot of good utility in there. And so I've forked that and made it my own a bit and have been enjoying using that so far.
773
00:53:08.585 --> 00:53:18.470
And my next pick today is a conference talk video that I watched a little while ago called the unreasonable effectiveness of dynamic typing for practical programs.
774
00:53:19.330 --> 00:53:20.230
And it's
775
00:53:21.535 --> 00:53:22.755
a discussion of
776
00:53:23.295 --> 00:53:25.155
the static versus dynamic
777
00:53:25.455 --> 00:53:30.980
typing argument that's been going on for ages and has a lot of really cogent points
778
00:53:31.520 --> 00:53:32.420
about how
779
00:53:33.200 --> 00:53:44.835
static typing is good for solving certain sets of problems, but in the whole dynamic dynamic typing is at least equally as good at a number of those same problems, particularly in terms of
780
00:53:45.455 --> 00:53:50.240
the accuracy and reliability of code as long as you're practicing proper unit testing,
781
00:53:50.780 --> 00:53:51.280
techniques
782
00:53:52.220 --> 00:53:53.760
and not relying
783
00:53:54.220 --> 00:53:57.015
solely on manual testing. So
784
00:53:57.974 --> 00:54:09.040
the the gains that you get from static typing don't necessarily outweigh the gains you get from dynamic typing and in some cases can also be detrimental because of the upfront cognitive load necessary for having to decide
785
00:54:09.500 --> 00:54:14.800
all of your types ahead of time and how all of that is going to play out throughout your entire application.
786
00:54:15.575 --> 00:54:21.115
So definitely recommend giving that a look, particularly for people who are firmly in the Python camp.
787
00:54:21.494 --> 00:54:24.810
And with that, I will pass it to you, Mariano. What have you got for PIX today?
788
00:54:26.330 --> 00:54:26.650
Some
789
00:54:28.010 --> 00:54:29.230
in terms of software,
790
00:54:29.850 --> 00:54:31.710
1 thing I've been
791
00:54:32.605 --> 00:54:33.505
creating lately,
792
00:54:34.845 --> 00:54:36.545
small to medium sized application
793
00:54:37.405 --> 00:54:37.905
using,
794
00:54:38.925 --> 00:54:41.025
I don't know if it's a framework, but
795
00:54:42.140 --> 00:54:44.319
a library from from ClosureScript,
796
00:54:45.099 --> 00:54:45.839
the closure
797
00:54:46.780 --> 00:54:49.200
dialect that compiles to JavaScript called omnext.
798
00:54:49.985 --> 00:54:50.885
It's on
799
00:54:51.825 --> 00:54:58.485
alpha currently, so you may get burned, but it's quite stable. I've been using it and the product
800
00:54:59.390 --> 00:54:59.890
works,
801
00:55:00.190 --> 00:55:09.835
and I hadn't had any surprises with it. I recommend you to check, David Nolan's talks about Next and the reasons behind the the the project
802
00:55:10.295 --> 00:55:15.995
because also the it's a really novel approach to creating UIs
803
00:55:17.369 --> 00:55:18.349
on your browser.
804
00:55:18.809 --> 00:55:19.309
It
805
00:55:20.329 --> 00:55:23.630
I I don't know if I will be able to go back to JavaScript
806
00:55:24.055 --> 00:55:30.315
after creating a UI with Next because it makes so many things that in JavaScript are a pain
807
00:55:30.694 --> 00:55:31.515
so simple
808
00:55:32.460 --> 00:55:32.960
that,
809
00:55:34.460 --> 00:55:35.760
yeah, I it's
810
00:55:36.060 --> 00:55:38.880
addictive in some sense. Of course, there there may be,
811
00:55:40.220 --> 00:55:40.720
applications
812
00:55:41.805 --> 00:55:47.825
where you need a, like, extreme performance where you cannot use it, but for simple applications, for experiments, for
813
00:55:48.285 --> 00:55:53.810
applications that don't require extreme performance on the front end side, I think on next, it's really, really interesting.
814
00:55:55.790 --> 00:55:56.290
And
815
00:55:56.590 --> 00:56:00.214
as a result, I recommend you to check closure script if
816
00:56:01.155 --> 00:56:04.454
you don't like JavaScript and are looking for something else
817
00:56:05.155 --> 00:56:06.775
to create your front ends
818
00:56:07.340 --> 00:56:10.960
because, sadly, Python doesn't have a good story on compile to
819
00:56:12.380 --> 00:56:20.075
JavaScript. There there are many projects trying to, but I don't think there's 1, like, production ready, like, ClosureScript is. And
820
00:56:22.030 --> 00:56:24.130
also something I'm checking, it's
821
00:56:24.990 --> 00:56:25.490
also
822
00:56:25.950 --> 00:56:27.089
quite new.
823
00:56:28.030 --> 00:56:30.770
It's, a project called The Things Network.
824
00:56:31.645 --> 00:56:33.745
It's a project that started in the Netherlands.
825
00:56:34.525 --> 00:56:40.465
The some people found, a new protocol and some devices. The protocol is called LoRaWAN
826
00:56:41.150 --> 00:56:41.970
that allows
827
00:56:42.430 --> 00:56:47.810
really low energy devices to that can can live with the battery for, like, years
828
00:56:48.110 --> 00:56:50.210
to send really small amounts of data,
829
00:56:50.795 --> 00:56:52.095
but for long distances.
830
00:56:53.194 --> 00:56:55.535
So they they did an experiment in Amsterdam,
831
00:56:55.915 --> 00:57:00.390
and it's I think it worked, And they created a Kickstarter campaign to
832
00:57:01.410 --> 00:57:03.350
to create a really cheap,
833
00:57:04.130 --> 00:57:10.494
what they call a gateway. That is, a device like a Wi Fi router that you connect to in your home
834
00:57:11.115 --> 00:57:12.174
and can cover
835
00:57:12.795 --> 00:57:13.295
theoretically
836
00:57:15.000 --> 00:57:15.740
10 kilometers,
837
00:57:17.080 --> 00:57:20.140
how do you say it, circle area of 10 kilometers.
838
00:57:20.440 --> 00:57:20.940
Mhmm.
839
00:57:22.395 --> 00:57:29.775
That that means it can receive messages from 10 kilometers around, lines of sight. In a city, it reduces to, like, 3 kilometers, but it's a lot.
840
00:57:30.630 --> 00:57:31.370
And some
841
00:57:32.230 --> 00:57:34.090
development kits and devices
842
00:57:34.390 --> 00:57:37.130
that to make it easy for people to experiment with this technology.
843
00:57:37.705 --> 00:57:39.165
And the Kickstarter was
844
00:57:39.465 --> 00:57:41.885
successful. They are launching the
845
00:57:42.265 --> 00:57:43.145
the this,
846
00:57:43.465 --> 00:57:44.765
the things gateway
847
00:57:45.385 --> 00:57:46.605
in July, I think,
848
00:57:47.300 --> 00:57:52.760
and I find it really interesting. I'm looking into it. Yesterday, I gave a talk about the the protocol.
849
00:57:53.380 --> 00:57:55.800
In my blog post, I wrote a
850
00:57:56.185 --> 00:57:57.885
short description of the protocol
851
00:57:59.305 --> 00:58:02.605
and how it works and what it does and what it doesn't do and
852
00:58:03.040 --> 00:58:06.420
stuff like that, I recommend you to check it because I think,
853
00:58:07.359 --> 00:58:10.980
I am always thinking on doing something with, like, sensors sending information
854
00:58:11.865 --> 00:58:13.485
and then showing it somewhere else.
855
00:58:13.865 --> 00:58:17.645
But you if you use Arduino or Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone,
856
00:58:19.280 --> 00:58:24.340
you have to have a power source and they all rely on Wi Fi or something like that. So you cannot
857
00:58:25.120 --> 00:58:28.580
create 1 of these and put it on a field or
858
00:58:29.465 --> 00:58:33.405
on on a tree or on a river because it won't work.
859
00:58:34.025 --> 00:58:36.365
And I find this really interesting
860
00:58:37.065 --> 00:58:37.565
alternative.
861
00:58:38.210 --> 00:58:39.349
Of course, it's the
862
00:58:39.730 --> 00:58:48.704
the the protocol is new and the devices are new and the project is new, so I'm not saying everything works. I'm exploring it, and I recommend you to check it also.
863
00:58:50.444 --> 00:58:57.460
Well, again, I definitely appreciate you taking the time out of your day to join me and tell us all more about FNA and
864
00:58:57.840 --> 00:59:00.500
why we should consider using it for some of our projects.
865
00:59:00.880 --> 00:59:02.900
And, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
866
00:59:03.545 --> 00:59:06.045
Thank you. Enjoy your rest of your day too.