[creativeSlumber]

> Is it... time for me to take another pass at this?

Yes please. I was very excited for Sandstorm when it first started. Sad to see it's current stage.

Also I think the world around has evolved quite a bit wrt containerization from when Sandstorm first started. I wonder how you would build it today, if you were to build from scratch. Could you utilize docker for most of the containerization?

[kentonv]

I think if I were doing it again I would not use containers at all. Instead I'd use isolates -- like Cloudflare Workers. In fact I'd probably build in on workerd (open source Cloudflare Workers runtime).

I'm obviously a bit biased here, as the architect of Cloudflare Workers. But, I think it's a much better fit for Sandstorm than containers were. Sandstorm suffered from some really bad cold start times, especially with every "grain" (e.g. document) running in its own container. It also led to a lot of other inefficiencies.

The down side of this is of course that it'd be much harder to port existing apps to the platform (unless maybe if they were already written to target Workers). But I think:

* Sandstorm didn't support existing apps very well anyway. It took a lot of work to convert apps for Sandstorm's security model. Many of the best Sandstorm apps were written from scratch for Sandstorm -- which incidentally was a lot easier than writing a traditional app, because Sandstorm took care of a lot of the work for you.

* AI-assisted coding takes a lot of the pressure off to support existing apps, because it'll be that much easier to build new ones. A Sandstorm-like environment would be a great fit for vibe coding since it takes care of so much of the boilerplate and enforces security in a way that the app can't screw it up.

What do you think? Would this ruin it for you?

[ocdtrekkie]

The ability to convert existing apps is possibly one of the strongest benefits, even if it is a lot of work.

One person actually trying to take a pass at this without trying to support app porting is Olivier Forget's Dropserver. I'd argue he's got the closest model to Sandstorm's security focus without worrying about supporting legacy packaging.

I do think if vibe coding is up to the task it should be possible to vibe code Sandstorm right out of its dependency lock. ;)

[kentonv]

> I do think if vibe coding is up to the task it should be possible to vibe code Sandstorm right out of its dependency lock. ;)

Not really -- you'd still need a systems engineer who is capable of doing it themselves to guide the AI and review the output. Otherwise it'll probably end up a buggy, insecure mess.

But buggy insecure messes are not a big deal when implementing application code inside the sandbox. So for that you can have a non-engineer prompt the AI and get a perfectly usable result.

[crabmusket]

Sandstorm, to me, feels like the ideal place to build apps which are "home cooked meals":

https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

AI assisted vibe coding is part of that, like Maggie Appleton talks about with her barefoot developers:

https://www.localfirst.fm/13

Sandstorm takes away the concerns of implementing a SaaS, it takes away the identity handling, the hosting, all the nonsense and just gives you your own little world. It seems like it would be a really nice way to maintain family or comminity, or even small business tools, if it were just a bit more polished and focused on use by non-experts.

[kentonv]

Yes that's exactly how I'm thinking of it!