Seems like an interesting effort. A developer is building an alternative Java-based backend to Lemmy’s Rust-based one, with the goal of building in a handful of different features. The dev is looking at using this compatibility to migrate their instance over to the new platform, while allowing the community to use their apps of choice.
Based on all the other threads and cross posts it just seems like this software is being created because Jason Grim doesn’t like the lemmy devs or their politics. I guess that’s as good of a reason to fork as any. I’m happy with the way lemmy is and how its being created so I have been doing monthly donations to them for its development.
It’s not a fork though. It’s a complete rewrite in another programming language. That’s way more effort than a petty project.
The truth is, this might succeed based on developer reach. I love Rust, but I know it won’t have the reach (yet) that Java can, and more developers mean faster progress.
In the end, between this, Lemmy or another project which may be a fork of either, the success will be due to efforts of everyone involve at every stage. This wouldn’t exist without Lemmy, and Lemmy wouldn’t exist with ActivityPub.
I’m not sure I believe “faster” progress really means anything when two communists are creating a hobby software that isn’t really for business or necessarily targeting growth at all costs.
This is not hobby software, this is public good software. They are paid in large part by grants
an alternative Java-based backend
kill it with fire
Next step, is to remake Lemmy in JavaScript. Pure JavaScript, no typescript, only express, nothing else
rewrite it in perl with a flat file database.
I have a hard time believing that rewriting the backend from scratch would be faster than getting PRs approved on the main project.
Forks like this with one guy who “knows best” usually die a slow quiet death as they get left behind by the main project.
I think how quickly this project has gotten to near feature parity is a testament to how slow Lemmy development has been. Think about scaled sort (a feature that has been hotly requested since the migration) and how long that took to get merged in. A sort should not by any means be slow to implement.
I like this, I will contribute to this, I think a lot of Java haters in this thread fail to realize just how massive Java is compared to everything else.
Rust might be the latest, hottest, bestest Java killer out there and it might be a completely superior language to Java, doesn’t matter, it’s dwarfed in terms of how many people actually use it for real projects, projects that should run for years and years. Even if Rust is the true Java killer, it’s gonna take a good few more years for it to kill java, measured in decades, there is just way too many projects and critical stuff out there that is running on Java, that means lots of jobs out there for java, still and still more.
This means there are a lot of senior Java programmers out there with lots of years of experience to contribute to this project.
Plus Lemmy itself having alternatives and choices is just a good thing.
Thank you for your perspective
Languages won’t grow if you ditch them for other ones. There’s lots of reasons to use rust, outside of the size of the project
I think you will find that the biggest reason to use a language is to get paid for it and there Java is very well positioned
That’s the reason for for hire devs yeah, but if you are starting a new project ( especially a community one like lemmy where the profit motive is different) choosing your tech stack is a complex decision
I am not a fan of Java. However, I think that you are 100% correct. This is a potentially very useful stack to have available and I hope that the two projects track together well.
This project has potential for high velocity development that Lemmy will never be able to match, purely because of the languages. Rust is, factually, slower to develop in than Java, even for experienced devs. Add to that the greater population that is comfortable with Java, and you have a recipe for really pushing interesting things and innovating quickly. Possibly establishing a relationship somewhat like Debian Sid to Debian Stable. It could also be interesting to have some low-level, Rust modules that are shared between the two when Lemmy gets to 1.0 (API stability), if there is something that is more optimally implemented in Rust but that would introduce more coupling.
Why Java though ? Like really ? It’s… Better than any other compiled language ?
Because modern Java is an OK language with a great ecosystem to quickly build web backends. And there are lots of java devs which means more potential contributors.
Hello world in Java = 500 lines of code.
Hello world in Rust = 3 lines of code.
Java is over-engineered corporate bullshit used by banks and Android development. Nobody programs Java for the fun of it.
Hello World is < 10 lines in Java. Just say you don’t know the language and go away.
Java runs the majority of corporate software out there, and it is very good at what it’s built for.
I’ll take Java over Python/Rust any day of the week
Probably because everyone knows it and its more predictable
Predictable in what sense?
If you say the function should only recieve one argument and returns always boolean. It is predictable to only allow the wanted args and forces you to return a boolean.
For example in a less predictable programming language e.g. Python: I can do all above but python does not stop anyone to put more or less arguments to a function, or a developer not adding typehints or not complying to them and return a string instead of a boolean.
But i had it wrong rust is similar to java on that part.
But still it is a lot more popular and easier to start with. So there will be a lot more contributor to sublinks than lemmy ever had.
Well in that sense Rust is even more predictable than Java. In Java you can always get back exception that bubbled up the stack. Rust function would in that case return Result that you need to handle somehow before getting the value.
That i dont understand? How can it be a result that i need to handle? If its not correct than java will throw an error. ( As expected, shit in shit out )
It’s a great and probably the best error system I’ve seen, instead of just throwing errors and having bulky try catch statements and such there’s just a result type.
Say you have a function that returns a boolean in which something could error, the function would return a Result<bool, Error> and that’s it. Calling the function you can choose to do anything you want with that possible Error, including ignoring it or logging or anything you could want.
It’s extremely simple.
If I except a boolean, there is an error and get a Result, is Result an object? How do I know if I get a bool or error?
Having a frontend rewrite seemed more critical than trying reimplementing the backend in a different language.
Remember, Lemmy had 4 years of development to iron out bugs, and this is essentially promising to make something in months that has a fully compatible backend to support all the third party apps, while adding features on top of what Lemmy has, and with a better front end with better mod tools to boot, with a complete rewrite of everything.
The scope of this project has planned for is already unviable. Suppose that Sublinks does reach feature parity to the current version of Lemmy, congratulations, the backend or mod tools is not something a regular user is going to notice or care about at all, all they will know is that suddenly, there are weird bugs that wasn’t there before, and that causes frustration.
And this project is going to get more developer traction because… Java?
I’d like to be proven wrong, but I’m very sceptical about the success of Sublinks, because it look like a project that was started out of tech arrogance to prove a point than out of a real need, I don’t work in tech, but the general trajectory of these kind of projects is that “enthusiasm from frustration” can only take you so far before the annoyance of dealing with mundane problems piles up, and the project fizzles out and ends with a whimper.
Lemmy had 4 years of development to iron out bugs
Lemmy had 4 years to accrue technical debt and make foot-guns first-class features. A rewrite is probably exactly what it needs.
Removed by mod
I have and if I’m honest I’m probably a little bit too harsh. I think the bigger issue is honestly the priorities of the dev team. There’s good reason that this project is focussing on moderation tooling.
What sort of moderation tools are you missing in Lemmy?
Some things that seem hard to argue with:
- A mod panel with things like ‘add moderator’ (maybe this could be attached to the new moderator view?)
- Targeted reports (choose who receives it; admin/moderator)
- Moderation actions on jerboa
- Moderator edits. There’s a fine line here and I can understand why you wouldn’t want total edit capabilities but it’d be nice to at least be able to do things like mark as nsfw and add content warnings. This sort of feature should also probably target megathreads
- Private communities (I know local only communities are in the works but there’s a whole mess of other criteria that would be useful)
My own personal wishlist:
- Karma requirements
- First class wikis
- Hashtags (I actually think a super simple stopgap solution here is to just have them link to the appropriate search page)
- Flairs
There’s some other stuff that I have seen PRs for and I do understand y’all are working hard. I appreciate the work you’ve done so far and the communities you’ve helped build. The Internet is undoubtedly a better place for it.
Dessalines is currently working on mod actions for Jerbia. Someone recently made a PR for moderator edits but it seems there was not enough interest and it was closed by the author. Better reports handling would be nice, but if you read the issue its not really clear how this should work. Private communities are on the roadmap for this year.
Karma is intentionally left out of Lemmy because it has many negative effects. Wikis make more sense as a standalone project, in fact Im working on something. Flairs are also potentially on the roadmap. For hashtags I dont really see the benefit as they would serve a very similar purpose to communities.
The ones on the Sublinks roadmap are interesting, for instance the warning system: https://github.com/orgs/sublinks/projects/1/views/7
Create a way to create a warning system for users. For example, a user gets a warning for posting a broken link multiple times. We don’t want to ban them for that. Or a admin gives a user a Warning with a reason. Create a rules system for auto actions like banning for some time or forever. Consider adding types of warnings. This should also track bans from communities for admin-level auto actions. The profile page shows strikes similar to Mastodon for Mods/Admins only and the user that owns the profile. Examples, warnings in each community, and bans. Rules will be applied to counts of warning types or total warnings over time. 3 warnings within a month is a ban for a month, for example.
There was also this list from a few months ago: https://discuss.online/post/12787?scrollToComments=true
True a warning system makes sense.
And you think that a rewrite would magically solve all those technical debts?
Magically no, but sometimes a clean slate is easier than a refactor. I’m speaking generally though, I’ve never looked at Lemmy’s code, and I’m not even who you originally replied to.
There are some projects that start because of “tech arrogance” as you describe the current situation. MariaDB, Git, LibreOffice are some of the most famous ones, but I’m sure there are more.
I have higher hopes. Java is three times more developers than Rust (https://www.statista.com/statistics/793628/worldwide-developer-survey-most-used-languages/), and you can see in this thread a number of people saying they could contribute as they know Java and not Rust.
Let’s hope for the best.
Java is a corporate language that most devs hate. Rust (Lemmy) is more popular as a hobby language that devs enjoy hacking in for fun.
That’s bullshit, frankly
Java is a corporate language that most devs hate
Citation required, because strangely enough people whom I hear about complaining about Java never seem to be the good developers but the ones I wouldn’t hire
Hm, Java is hated by devs, but still 2nd language on GitHub with 11,7% of the total code hosted, while Rust is number 13 with 1,8%?
Stockholm syndrome.
And even more, the Lemmy codebase doesn’t really have any important developers besides the two main devs: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/graphs/contributors.
Even looking at the contributions to something like Mbin, which has been around for much shorter, you already see 6 people with more than 50 commits, while Lemmy has one
We have 13 contributors with Sublinks so far. I expect more will come after the announcement.
Java devs like you need to step away from the PC and stop assaulting the world with a terrible language. You should be ashamed of yourselves for inflicting decades of misery on the world.
Java will go the way of COBOL. The future is Nim.
I’m pretty sure Nutomic was a Java dev before starting work on Lemmy and learning Rust from scratch. That by itself should already speak volumes.
One-Up projects like this rarely ever turn out well, that’s from my own experiences. Even though this isn’t a popular view, I still think I’m right on this one, we can circle back in say, 6 months, to see if my predictions are right.
I also was a professional java dev, and also had to use spring boot in most corporate environments.
I don’t wanna knock anyone’s re-write, because I know how difficult it is to dissuade someone when they’re excited about a project. But to me, starting a new project or doing a rewrite, is the best opportunity to learn a newer, better language. We taught ourself Rust by coding lemmy, and I recently learned Kotlin / jetpack compose because I wanted to learn android development. Learning new languages is not an issue for most programmers; we have to learn new frameworks and languages every year or so if we want to keep up.
This is potentially hundreds of hours of wasted time that could be spent on other things. Even if someone absolutely hates Rust and doesn’t want to contribute to the massive amount of open issues on Lemmy, there are still a lot of front-ends that could use more contributors.
I’m pretty sure Nutomic was a Java dev before starting work on Lemmy and learning Rust from scratch.
That is true, I used to be an Android developer and then learned Rust by writing code for Lemmy. Are you by any chance my new stalker?
And if we’re comparing the languages, the fact alone that there are no Nullpointerexceptions makes Rust infinitely better than Java for me. I also agree that this sort of copycat project will soon be forgotten. For example have you ever heard of Rustodon?
Are you by any chance my new stalker?
No, it was on that AMA you guys did months ago, and I remember things about people.
Very impressive! The only thing I can remember well are places.
Too bad it’s java
I see you woke up and chose violence.
I just self host and avoid Java like the plague due to how annoying it is to manage
3 billion devices can’t be wrong…
Browsing the code makes me angry at how bloated Java projects are:
package com.sublinks.sublinksapi.community.repositories; import com.sublinks.sublinksapi.community.dto.Community; import com.sublinks.sublinksapi.community.models.CommunitySearchCriteria; import com.sublinks.sublinksapi.post.dto.Post; import com.sublinks.sublinksapi.post.models.PostSearchCriteria; import org.springframework.data.domain.Page; import org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable; import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository; import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.Query; import org.springframework.data.repository.query.Param; import java.util.List; public interface CommunitySearchRepository { List<Community> allCommunitiesBySearchCriteria(CommunitySearchCriteria communitySearchCriteria); }Every file is 8 directories deep, has 20 imports, and one SQL statement embedded in a string literal. 😭
Yup. Welcome to the world of Java where such things are not only silly but encouraged.
And what’s bad about that? As in, how is the verbosity a negative thing exactly? More so because virtually any tool can be configured to default-collapse these things if for your specific workflow you don’t require the information.
At the same time, since everything is verbose, you can get very explicit information if you need it.
Here’s an example:
IMO that’s a lot of code (and a whole dedicated file) just to (magically) hook a global event and increase the subscriber count when a link object is added.
The worst part is that it’s all copy/pasted into a neighbouring file which does the reverse:
It’s not the end of the world or anything, I just think good code should surprise you with its simplicity. This surprises me with its complexity.
Lol how about one written in NodeJS? 😆
Brainfuck would be my choice if we are making things harder for ourselves.
There’s nothing wrong with java
Oh yes there is
I love Java.
I didn’t know Lemmy was written in Rust.
Lemmy is how I learned about Rust.
This actually makes me want to contribute to lemmy.
I can’t find the fucking porn on Lemmy, so maybe this is a good thing.
Lemmynsfw
