First stable version of Scheme web framework Artanis released | Hacker News Reader

First stable version of Scheme web framework Artanis released

lists.gnu.org

126 pointsnalaginrut22 comments

Nice work. Having written a few WAFs for unpopular languages, I think it's most compelling to also include a more stable/mature backend like FastCGI in addition to the self-rolled socket driver -- similar to how Flask has the dev server and WSGI backend support. If your socket driver (and HTTP parser) ends up being more performant and stable, that's awesome. But it's probably unlikely and definitely a harder sell.

FastCGI in particular has the benefit of being incredibly simple to wrap. Here [0] are some rudimentary bindings I wrote for Chicken Scheme.

[0] https://github.com/eatonphil/pine

Definitely second your recommendation on FastCGI: it's very straightforward, and it's simple for people to deploy.

SCGI is even simpler, and often enough for low traffic purposes.

If you didn't know already, "Artanis" is "Sinatra" backwards. It is similar to frameworks such as Ruby Sinatra, Python Flask and Java Spark.

Also the main dev, "Nala Ginrut" is "Alan Turing" backwards, sorta.

I just noticed that. I thought they named it after the Protoss character from StarCraft.

Nostalgia kicks in and memories of playing StarCraft on Dial-Up return... I miss how simple the web was back then... AOL, MSN, not even Google was mainstream yet I don't think haha

Also for those wondering:

http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Artanis

The AOL dream is sorta realized... AIM is now Facebook Messenger, AOL emphasized keyword search over addresses just like how people just Google everything... maybe that's all actually...

It's also another name for Galadriel, the Lord of the Rings character.

I severely misread this and thought you meant that Alan Turing backwards was another name for Galadriel for ~5 minutes

/sigh.

"Sailing to /dev/null

That is no future for mediocre coder.

The hacker is one another's arm. Codes in the editors.

Those dying generations - at their song."

That's what the project page says. Anyone know what it means?

That sounds like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_to_Byzantium

It's barely even English, and not even clever. They actually took that Byzantium poem and ruined it with poor grammar. I pretty much dismissed this thing right after reading that. Of all the text they could have put on the page...

Extremely cool. Can't wait to write something in this! Why is the configuration[1] done in an ad-hoc language instead of Guile?

[1]: http://www.gnu.org/software/artanis/manual/manual.html#org96...

I tried Artanis about a year ago - very cool, but I only played with it, never deployed anything. It is an impressive amount of work done by one person and the documentation is very adequate.

I should have another go at contributing to the documentation in my copious spare time. The lead dev seems like a really nice, enthusiastic guy.

Cool! Thanks for your efforts. I also enjoy the lead dev’s online persona.

Think Permissions. Authentication backends. For the world, as it is. Built it into the thing right form the beginning. Always.

There is no future for mediocre frameworks that do not come with what is most hard to get right - knowing who to let in and what to allow them - that is the most important hackers work - to collect that knowledge in devoted collaboration is the noble generations teaching.

The work that does not make the reasoning on locks and keys its cornerstone looks hollow, inchoate, empty. No need for just another lightweight paper castle, no matter how magic your language speaks - it needs to fill the needs of a warriors world, full of dark and evil souls, so better you draft with shelter always on your mind.

"scheme web framework", except there are multiple scheme implementations and variants. I don't understand why the word scheme is even used, each scheme is basically a silo.

There are variations but there are also commonalities. For example, if two implementations of Scheme are based on the same language spec (e.g. R6RS, etc...) they should be broadly compatible.

As ZenoArrow mentioned, it's like C or C++ compilers, they may be different and made by different teams but they support a specific set of rules, if your code follows those specific rules any compiler that implements the needed features should be able to run your code.

Common Lisp is famous for this, and some Scheme languages as well. In theory this framework should be able to run in another Scheme. Even HackerNews which is it's own Lisp variant once ran on Racket (might still) but it's not impossible to be ported to another Lisp variant (sometimes with minimal or no overhead).

Unless Artanis uses FFI calls (which are not part of any SRFI I recall) it is quite reasonable to implement an entire WAF using standard Scheme + SRFIs (for instance, there's an SRFI for socket IO). Build steps always differ but it isn't necessarily difficult to avoid using implementation-specific functionality.

For a non-trivial example, check out the R7RS benchmark suite [0]. 10 of the 30 implementations there complete 95%+ of the benchmarks. (10 is a lot of options...) Racket is probably the most intentionally divergent from Scheme and it still manages to provide an R7RS front-end making it one of only 5 Schemes to finish 100% of the benchmarks (and be pretty fast).

[0] https://github.com/ecraven/r7rs-benchmarks

She mentions in the "About" page that it is Guile. The release announcement says it as well.

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