3 ms·

Could be killer if combined with electron.

by rvikmanis 11y ago

davej 11y ago
Why particularly with Electron?
- paulddraper 11y ago
  Presumably because Electron needs to be hackable/customizable for lots of devs and performant for lots of workloads.
derefr 11y ago
If the goal is having a fast "business-rules engine" coupled to a pretty HTML5-based app-wrapper, one of my own projects is to combine Electron with the Erlang VM. Rather than trying to go whole-hog on linking the two worlds together at a process level, I've just embedded an Erlang release into the Electron package, which decompresses itself to the user's Library/APPDATA dir on Electron startup, transparently registers as a service (so it can continue to run for things like server sync when the app is quit), and then communicates with the app using Unix domain sockets. It's a bit like the feeling of having a Service Worker, but one that just happens to be able to embed things like physics engines inside of it.
- mmastrac 11y ago
  I'm doing the same thing with a JVM. I had to fix the bug where named pipes on Windows were totally busted in Electron before I could make any progress.
  - derefr 11y ago
    Ah, I ran into that problem (I think?) and had been just using regular IP sockets as a stop-gap, planning to switch back over after it was fixed. I'm glad to hear someone with knowledge of Electron internals ran into it as well; I feel bad that I didn't file it as a bug, though.
    - mmastrac 11y ago
      If you're curious, the fix was here: https://github.com/atom/electron/issues/1968 https://github.com/atom/electron/issues/1968 It made it out into the regular release and I think it's fixed but TBH I haven't tested for a few months. My work is all on GH here as well: https://github.com/orbitaljs https://github.com/orbitaljs There might be some synergy here between the projects.
- shadeless 11y ago
  Using Erlang in a desktop application sounds great, do you have any code online somewhere? Or could you make a gist? I would love to see how you made that work.
- lucaspiller 11y ago
  You might want to look into BERT [0], I think there is a JavaScript library. We used it a few years ago to call Ruby from Erlang, it wasn't fast at the time, but it did what we needed it to do. [0] https://github.com/blog/531-introducing-bert-and-bert-rpc https://github.com/blog/531-introducing-bert-and-bert-rpc
- arca_vorago 11y ago
  Give me this but with Elixir and Im sold.
  - alexnewman 11y ago
    why elixir over rust? I'd assume rust makes more sense because you don't need gc
ZenoArrow 11y ago
Great idea. Also wonder if using Neon to speed up Electron could give a noticeable performance boost to Atom.
ajholyoake 11y ago
What is electron in this context? (The ex-atom maybe?)
- dubcanada 11y ago
  Yes

Could be killer if combined with electron.

davej 11y ago

Why particularly with Electron?

paulddraper 11y ago
Presumably because Electron needs to be hackable/customizable for lots of devs and performant for lots of workloads.

derefr 11y ago

If the goal is having a fast "business-rules engine" coupled to a pretty HTML5-based app-wrapper, one of my own projects is to combine Electron with the Erlang VM. Rather than trying to go whole-hog on linking the two worlds together at a process level, I've just embedded an Erlang release into the Electron package, which decompresses itself to the user's Library/APPDATA dir on Electron startup, transparently registers as a service (so it can continue to run for things like server sync when the app is quit), and then communicates with the app using Unix domain sockets. It's a bit like the feeling of having a Service Worker, but one that just happens to be able to embed things like physics engines inside of it.

mmastrac 11y ago
I'm doing the same thing with a JVM. I had to fix the bug where named pipes on Windows were totally busted in Electron before I could make any progress.
- derefr 11y ago
  Ah, I ran into that problem (I think?) and had been just using regular IP sockets as a stop-gap, planning to switch back over after it was fixed. I'm glad to hear someone with knowledge of Electron internals ran into it as well; I feel bad that I didn't file it as a bug, though.
  - mmastrac 11y ago
    If you're curious, the fix was here: https://github.com/atom/electron/issues/1968 https://github.com/atom/electron/issues/1968 It made it out into the regular release and I think it's fixed but TBH I haven't tested for a few months. My work is all on GH here as well: https://github.com/orbitaljs https://github.com/orbitaljs There might be some synergy here between the projects.
shadeless 11y ago
Using Erlang in a desktop application sounds great, do you have any code online somewhere? Or could you make a gist? I would love to see how you made that work.
lucaspiller 11y ago
You might want to look into BERT [0], I think there is a JavaScript library. We used it a few years ago to call Ruby from Erlang, it wasn't fast at the time, but it did what we needed it to do. [0] https://github.com/blog/531-introducing-bert-and-bert-rpc https://github.com/blog/531-introducing-bert-and-bert-rpc
arca_vorago 11y ago
Give me this but with Elixir and Im sold.
- alexnewman 11y ago
  why elixir over rust? I'd assume rust makes more sense because you don't need gc

ZenoArrow 11y ago

Great idea. Also wonder if using Neon to speed up Electron could give a noticeable performance boost to Atom.

ajholyoake 11y ago

What is electron in this context? (The ex-atom maybe?)

dubcanada 11y ago
Yes