this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2024
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Are there enough admins and developers fed up with Lemmy to maintain a fork?
The problem with this, in my opinion, is Lemmy is written in Rust. From what I can tell, there aren't enough Rust developers to pitch in AND there are better languages to use in a web application.
I really don't think the language is the problem here. I wrote some thoughts here https://feddit.dk/comment/6556927
I'm a professional software developer using Rust so I guess you can either call me "biased" or "qualified to answer", but take that how you will.
But I suppose time will tell if some other threadiverse implementation in another language takes over.
I think the definition of best programming language here is not popular and hyped but “the one I use”. I really believe Java is worse than Rust for contributors. We’ll see how it goes.
Then again, a java codebase would be much more accessible to someone who has only coded in JS.
JS only has "Java" in the name, other than that they're pretty different languages (basically: JS is a clusterfuck, Java is a "get paid by the line" hyper-explicit enterprisey invention with deployment horror stories).
Despite their names, Java and JavaScript are very different languages and they really don't have much in common, so this doesn't make much sense.
Really? I mainly code in JS and to be honest, Java gives me C# vibes.
Definitely. I just mentioned JS because i think there are many people who only code for web. Or have js as their first language.
I concur; the best language is the one you know to get the task done. That said, Excel VBA isn't the correct language to use to write a Super Mario Bros Clone. I mean you can, but that doesn't make it the best language to do so.
In this case, the problem absolutely is that Lemmy is written in Rust. The developers constantly state there are only two devs for 40k+ people. IF Lemmy was written in another programing language, regardless of using the 'best' one, there would likely be more able and willing development contributions. Then again with an attitude like this regardless of chosen programming language; I doubt it.
As I said in the linked comment above, I'm not convinced that this is actually true and we've yet to see evidence that it is true.
I mean, didn't you just say it there? The problem isn't with Rust, the problem is with people, the resources available, the devs willingness to implement what you ask for and such. The problem sounds to me more social than technical. I really don't think the programming language is what is standing in the way here 😅
Ok; the developers attitudes certainly are.
Yeah. Pay attention to when I said it the first time so I don't have to repeat myself.
Sure thing m8, no need to get upset (your tone sounded a bit angry/annoyed) - happy cake day btw, never saw that before! :)
The best language is subjective, but performance-wise most traditional web-oriented languages are dogshit slow and will incur huge costs both in hosting and performance mitigations. Things like rust, go, or C will ensure long term performance.
Also, for volunteer-run websites like Lemmy sites, costs are very important as hosting costs is essentially the whole cost, since the volunteers aren't paid.
For companies who pay devs a salary, the hosting is negligible compared to the engineer salary so it's more efficient to just scale up and spend less time optimizing.
I wouldn't recommend C or C++, even the NSA is asking people to stop using them in favor of memory safe languages. The equivalent in performance, is Rust.
An option is to add a plugin system or API that allows integrating mod/filter tools written in other languages.
Email systems already do something like this. Postfix and others support milters (mail filters) which run as a separate process and communicate via a socket.
This would be something to bring up to @Penguincoder@beehaw.org since it falls outside my area of expertise.
So I've been working on a personal project link aggregator/forum that incorporates a lot of 'useful features'. It's not something that is prime time ready yet, but one of the key killer features I want to get operational before showcasing it, is exactly what you say. A method to allow plugins to be created an ran by admins and maybe mods. There is a lot that needs to go into the security of this though, and so it's not just a here run some code type of situation for users.
Mod tools are sorely needed on this platform, but I also don't want to be dictating how users of my software must use it. That is, what I may think are problems certainly may be, but how to solve it won't be the only way I say it should be. To that note, my plugin system (WIP) is a toss up between Lua scripts in a sandbox for mod programs/automodding, or the more basic
exprlanguage for Go.So right now for Lemmy or other alternatives I've aware of, this capability does not exist. For my project in this space, I don't want just another Lemmy. I want a BETTER Beehaw.
A fork wouldn't help anything at all, the problem is that nobody is working on the patches not that the devs won't accept them
Probably not. There are several alternative projects being worked on with varying states of completeness and refinement. But the alternatives all seem to have off set visions for their projects.