[zaarn]

This is a toy example to demonstrate a framework to build with. But I don't think it's not a cleanly solved engineering problem. Instead of reinventing xer Rust code in Go, Xe has simply taken the functional rust code and made go run it in a cross-platform and portable manner. Minimal effort from the engineer has been expended to solve this and C was not involved for FFI definitions either.

[nuc1e0n]

I don't care for the eccentricities of the Rust community, but this is a good article that demonstrates an effective approach to invoke code from one language to another. The problem is a toy one that's not the focus here. The focus is a better means of doing interop

[morelisp]

> Minimal effort from the engineer has been expended

Is the definition of "how do I get promoted in a company where I don't care if it survives the next five years", not "a cleanly solved engineering problem".

[zaarn]

I don't really see the maintenance issue. The rust code seems maintainable and the go code seems to be fairly lightweight overall.

[gw98]

You missed the two entire toolchains and the third tool required to stick them together?

It's pretty difficult and expensive to build one stack, let alone three and onboard another tool.

[ilyt]

The alternative is rewriting the code of Go into Rust or vice versa.

And if rewrite is Rust->Go way, also continual effort of porting any bugfixes in upstream lib.

I dare to say more complex toolchain is the easier and less time consuming part.

I wouldn't do it in this particular case (converting with mastodon powered html is probably simple enough) but it wouldn't be a terrible solution in some cases.

What's more interesting is if you use same method for app plugins, now you can compile anything in WASM and as long as it have right hooks it can be used in your app as a plugin

[morelisp]

> The alternative is rewriting the code of Go into Rust or vice versa.

This is more work up front, but it’s better engineering.

> easier and less time consuming

Have some pride, jesus christ.

[dom96]

Depends on how well supported those stacks are. WASM is very well supported and likely to be getting tested/used/improved extensively as the years go.

I'd rather work on software that depends on three different tech stacks that are well understood and used by many, than software that depends on a single niche tech stack.

[morelisp]

I'm not a "stick to a single stack for everything" kind of person, but here we're comparing Go or Rust, to Go + Rust + WASM. The first option is strictly and substantially less risky in this dimension.

[zaarn]

Depends on how the rest of your stack looks. I wouldn't presume.

[gw98]

I've dealt with pretty much everything from steaming nightmare creeping Cthulhu desktop applications right into back end fintech stuff written in the dark ages over the last 30 years. At no point have I found this solution being applied where it solved a problem. I have seen it applied many times where it created problems!

[xena]

Author here. My article is not supposed to talk about a good idea. It's meant to bring a bad idea to the table and explain why it works. I designed the function in question with the understanding that it would fire once or twice per 10 minutes. This means that paying a cost like 3.1 megabytes per invocation is okay. If this was intended to run _constantly_ (such as if it was a core part of a run loop), that's different.