Oops, I sent this to the wrong platform list :) Moving to [email protected]
On 15 December 2016 at 11:57, Benjamin Francis <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > In the last platform meeting > <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yo1AtuozukgfkZwzO745LdEsB1fdZrEWoIYr8F9eydo/edit?usp=sharing> > we talked about kicking off the implementation of some of the key > components of the platform, one of which is the WoT gateway implementation. > As HomeWeb will initially be the main (only) consumer of this component, I > wanted to make a suggestion about its implementation. > > We already have the fxbox <https://github.com/fxbox> source code to use > as a starting point, but before we just go ahead and fork all those > repositories under http://github.com/moziot/ (the new home of the > platform source code?) I'd like to suggest that we use the right tools for > the right jobs: > > - Protocol adaptors - Rust > - WoT API - NodeJS > > Reasons for using Rust for Protocol Adaptors: > > - Protocol adaptors (or whatever we end up calling them) are > essentially hardware drivers that talk to an underlying hardware component > (e.g. a ZigBee/ZWave/Bluetooth radio over a UART connection). This is > exactly the type of systems programming use cases that Rust was designed > for. > - This low level work is particularly performance and timing sensitive > and these requirements justify the overhead of using/learning and > cross-compiling a low level language. > - Rust is a modern and safe programming language which happens to be > maintained by Mozilla, which means we can add features that are missing and > improve it where necessary (we already added support for a new ARM chipset > on the HomeWeb project). > > Reasons for using Node for WoT APIs: > > - NodeJS is now a very popular language for server side web > development and has a huge existing community and collection of modules to > draw from. Using NodeJS will help attract community contribution from web > developers who can easily add their own modules when hacking on the > project. > - By comparison Rust is still relatively immature as a language for > web development as you can read about here > <http://www.arewewebyet.org/>. It's likely that our platform will need > to interact with a large range of existing software and services, > especially once third parties start to use it for their own projects. Rust > may hold us back here while we wait for it to mature. > - SensorWeb already started implementing the SensorThings API in > NodeJS. I'd suggest we will eventually want to share code between the cloud > and gateway WoT API <https://moziot.github.io/wot/> implementations. > > Using Rust for low level components and NodeJS for the WoT API seems to me > like a good compromise and has a parallel in Gecko where we use both > C++/Rust and JavaScript for different jobs. > > However, using two separate languages comes at a cost (both cognitive and > complexity-wise). I personally have zero experience of writing Rust and > while I know it's possible > <https://blog.risingstack.com/how-to-use-rust-with-node-when-performance-matters/> > to call Rust components from NodeJS I've never actually done it. I'm > interested to hear other peoples' views on this (without descending into > needless bikeshedding or a holy war!), particularly if anyone has > experience of using these two languages together. How feasible is this? > > Ben > _______________________________________________ dev-platform mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-platform
