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Comment by rovr138 | Hacker News Reader

What kind of backend dev work?

I do backend with Python, Julia and PHP.

They all have ARM builds and I’m not expecting issues. I’ve worked with them on ARM and have a few pi’s around running with projects on them.

But it depends on the type of backend work. If you’re using C and assembly and need to target x86, then I can see issues.

Regarding the move, I expect these first ones to be targeted more to regular users and to projects testing their projects on them.

IMO the main reason why things aren’t working on them right now is due to there not being availability and projects not having to move to it yet. But there’s no technical reason why things won’t be ported for them. The ecosystem just needs to grow.

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Mostly Python & JS in containers + the infra-supporting work. I guess my main concerns are OS packages (e.g. image processing libs) and docker/k8s.

And RE ecosystem: yeah I hope you're right (and think you are), I guess I'm just wondering what the odds are, and how feasible a switch back to Linux is without losing out on he niceness of mac-land.

There's currently an issue with Docker and they weren't able to fix it because the dev machines they where sending out didn't have virtualization enabled so they couldn't work on it.

This issue is regarding to starting docker.

Once that's up, there will be an issue with prebuilt images if they don't provide an ARM build. As more machines get out there, this should start to fix itself. For Python and JS, I don't foresee an issue with the projects that would prevent this. It's then an issue of who manages the project and if they want to do it or someone else forking it and providing arm builds. Not a big issue IMO. It's a fairly easy thing to do.

Anecdote, switching back to Linux, I've toyed with it recently and... it's not as frictionless (which sucks).

I run a bit of Linux infrastructure and I'm on servers all the time. But on laptops, I don't know why, I kept having issues. I went in knowing I won't have the integration and whatnot, but I still had some issues.

I ran it on extra, older, Apple hardware I have. Not sure if that might be why and newer or more compatible hardware would work better.

RE docker: yeah I saw that, I've no doubt that they'll get a working build - I kind of suspect that how long it takes might be a good idea of how hard it is to get working :D

RE docker images: yeah thankfully the big hitters (alpine etc) will be fine so should be ok here. I have less confidence in supporting libs though.

RE linux: Argh, sounds like we're of similar backgrounds and this is my fear to be honest. I've heard good things about dell/lenovo hardware so I'd probs have to swing that way for the next refresh, but yeah i suspect it won't be as painful as I'd like.

I'd be impressed if they could get a docker on the Mac working with not absolutely crappy volume mount performance.

> Once that's up, there will be an issue with prebuilt images if they don't provide an ARM build.

Does docker run on macos (amd64) now? I thought it ran in a Linux vm? If they get the vm to run, all images should work exactly the same as before (modulus any hit for amd64-on-arm vs amd64-on-amd64)?

They do.

It uses a Linux environment for it.

The issue is anything compiled or baked into the image using x86, won’t be able to run without yet another translation layer.

Could end up being

Mac arm > qemu emulating amd64 cpu > docker vm (Linux amd64) > whatever application

Could be done, just adds another layer to translate things and overhead.

I don't think a blanket answer will apply to everyone here: which specific tools that YOU use won't support ARM (and until when exactly)? If some tools won't support it for a while, can you live without them? Do you need to run all these backend tools on your own machine?

I think many people are trying to figure these questions for them out right now, as there is very little information yet on ARM support from many tools.

Yeah, totally agree - ironically I think it's rad that apple are kind of forcing this adoption of ARM. Could lead to cheaper/more energy efficient servers as adoption increases. I guess it just isn't the kind of thing I'm keen to be an early adopter for (admittedly selfishly).

Yea personally I'm the same boat. But going out and buying a macbook with an intel processor also doesn't seem a great idea as that's definitely not the focus going forward.

> I do backend with Python, Julia and PHP.

> They all have ARM builds and I’m not expecting issues.

I expect Julia to have an advantage here, as so much of Julia libs are pure Julia.

Id be surprised if php and python does not run in to problems with extensions, like database drivers, various libraries (eg: ssl/crypto, math, image processing etc).

Same for server side Javascript.

Will be interesting to see if Apple does a 180 and roll out servers again.

Ed: i expect database drivers might be an issue for Julia too.

Sure, but the nice thing about them is that they can all be recompiled at worst and then keep working.

BLAS libraries on ARM are much more varied in quality than on x_86

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