In this insightful article, Elad Ben-Israel, the mind behind the CDK, shares his love for the cloud, but also his frustrations with the complexity of building cloud applications. The challenges he identifies include:
1. Focus on non-functional mechanics: The need to understand and manage cloud platform mechanics instead of focusing on building valuable features for users.
2. Lack of independence: Developers often need to rely on others to handle parts of the deployment process or to resolve issues, interrupting their work flow.
3. Delayed feedback: The current iteration cycle in cloud development can take minutes or even longer, significantly slowing down the development process and making it harder for developers to stay in their flow state.
## It's not just a rant
Elad is not just ranting about cloud development. He proposes a solution in the form of a programming language for the cloud. This language would treat the entire cloud as its computer. The language compiler will be able to see the complete cloud application, unbound by the limits of individual machines. Such a compiler would be able to handle a significant portion of the application's non-functional aspects, enabling developers to operate at a more abstract level, thus reducing complexity and promoting autonomy. Moreover, it could expedite iteration cycles by allowing to compile applications to quick local simulators during the development process.
## The Winglang Project
Elad reveals that he's in the process of developing such an open-source, “cloud-oriented” language, dubbed Winglang (https://github.com/winglang/wing). Wing aims to improve the developer experience of cloud applications by enabling developers to build distributed systems that leverage cloud services as first-class citizens. This is achieved by integrating infrastructure and application code in a secure, unified programming model. Wing programs can be executed locally via a fully-functional simulator or deployed to any cloud provider.
## My Interest in Winglang
I, together with a group of dedicated contributors, joined forces with Elad to develop Winglang.
While still in Alpha and not yet ready for production use, it's already possible to build some real applications (https://github.com/winglang/research/tree/main/dogfooding).
## It's not just a rant
Elad is not just ranting about cloud development. He proposes a solution in the form of a programming language for the cloud. This language would treat the entire cloud as its computer. The language compiler will be able to see the complete cloud application, unbound by the limits of individual machines. Such a compiler would be able to handle a significant portion of the application's non-functional aspects, enabling developers to operate at a more abstract level, thus reducing complexity and promoting autonomy. Moreover, it could expedite iteration cycles by allowing to compile applications to quick local simulators during the development process.
## The Winglang Project
Elad reveals that he's in the process of developing such an open-source, “cloud-oriented” language, dubbed Winglang (https://github.com/winglang/wing). Wing aims to improve the developer experience of cloud applications by enabling developers to build distributed systems that leverage cloud services as first-class citizens. This is achieved by integrating infrastructure and application code in a secure, unified programming model. Wing programs can be executed locally via a fully-functional simulator or deployed to any cloud provider.
## My Interest in Winglang
I, together with a group of dedicated contributors, joined forces with Elad to develop Winglang. While still in Alpha and not yet ready for production use, it's already possible to build some real applications (https://github.com/winglang/research/tree/main/dogfooding).
Check out https://github.com/winglang/wing for more details.