I have a small homelab running a few services, some written by myself for small tasks - so the load is basically just me a few times a day.
Now, I’m a Java developer during the day, so I’m relatively productive with it and used some of these apps as learning opportunities (balls to my own wall overengineering to try out a new framework or something).
Problem is, each app uses something like 200mb of memory while doing next to nothing. That seems excessive. Native images dropped that to ~70mb, but that needs a bunch of resources to build.
So my question is, what is you go-to for such cases?
My current candidates are Python/FastAPI, Rust and Elixir, but I’m open for anything at this point - even if it’s just for learning new languages.
Go is quite nice for this, generally low traffic services are less than 100mb used memory if you’re using the standard lib stuff and it’s not a huge jump from the JVM to Go.
Go, you get small static binary, easy to code, and good performance.
Languages
C.
Frameworks
C.
That said, Python and Rust are great for setting up “starting up” / “small task” apps and growing up from there.
There’s nothing to really grow. It’s mostly just small helpers. Aggregate sensor data, pull data from A and push it to B every hour, a small dashboard, etc.
C is too involved for my case , I want to be productive after all.
Rust is already rather low level, though there are some cool looking frameworks.
C is an extremely expressive language. There’s a reason it won’t die and, while we all love to shit on it for the memes, you can write perfectly safe software in it.
you can write perfectly safe software in it.
In the same way that you can safely walk through a minefield.
I dunno what you mean about it being an expressive language either. I would say it is relatively low on the expressiveness scale compared to something like Python or OCaml. It’s basically as expensive as Go which is renowned for being unexpressive. Maybe you didn’t mean “expressive”.
Of course, but I’m not productive in it.
If I have to do everything myself, it will take more time to get it done. The trade-off is of course always control/speed vs convenience, but C is definitely too inconvenient for me.
If you’ve so far been able to do this stuff in Java, then presumably all your hardware has an OS and such and you don’t need this, but a colleague has been having a lot of fun with Rust and proper embedded development.
It’s very different from regular development, as you’ve got no OS, no filesystem, no memory allocations, no logging. It can most definitely be a pain.
But the guy always has the biggest grin on his face when he tells that he made a custom implementation of the CAN protocol (TCP is too complex for embedded 🙃) and that he had to integrate an LED to output error information and stuff like that. At the very least, it seems to be a lot less abstract, as you’re working directly with the hardware.
Scala compiles either to native, js or jvm - obviously the IO / interface options vary between these envs, but the lang is the same. Recently Scala 3.5 incorporates a simple-to-use CLI which makes it easier to compile to native (or just run a small file as a script, or experiment with a repl), native binaries are small and fast, and there are some simple io libraries. Since you can also compile to jvm to interop with java, that might help with transition.
But that would mean either using Graal/native image or going full Scala, right?
I only used Scala for Gatling, where it’s obviously very java-y.
Indeed to use scala-native you’d need pure-scala libraries, but the core lib re-implements most java lib, and there are now small simple external libs available for common tasks like file management, database, etc. - for example check out the lihaoyi suite.
I mainly use scala-js (to make this) which was formerly a java app - as it compiles to both js and jvm (cross-project) can gradually convert stuff you already wrote. I’ve tried native for stuff like pre-processing data files.
I feel like in a lot of ways, most languages are great candidates for this, for lots of different reasons!
- Rust: Great choice because it produces a small, very well optimised binary. If you just care about the output binary being small and non-memory intensive, then this is probably a good call.
Buuuuut, Rust’s compilation can be pretty resource intensive, so if you’re actually developing on limited hardware:
- C (or curveball option, Hare): produces a small, well optimised binary, with faster compilation. But less framework type things to help you on your way to apis/servers/etc.
Then there’s the fact that it’s a home server, so always on, meaning you actually have generous resources in some ways, because any available CPU is kinda just there to use so:
- Python: has a runtime and can be pretty heavy CPU wise, but lots of frameworks, and in all honesty, would wind up being a lot faster to put stuff together in than Rust or C. Probably a great default option until you hit resource issues.
And then why not go whole hog into the world of experimental languages:
- Roc: Doesn’t have versions yet, so super new, but should produce a pretty small binary and give you higher level ergonomics than something like Rust or C, especially if you’re into FP.
And then we’re forgetting about:
- Haskell: Haskell is the only true programming language, and any time there’s a selection of programming languages, picking the one that isn’t Haskell is the wrong choice. Just ask anyone who programs in Haskell.
But that doesn’t factor in:
- Javascript: Sooner or later, everything is just javascript anyway, why even try to resit?
Plus:
- Assembly: Can you even trust that it’s well optimised unless you’re writing the assembly yourself?
Edit: My actual serious answer is that Rust + Rocket would be great fun if you’re interested in learning something new, and you’d get very optimised code. If you just want it to use less memory that java and don’t want to spend too much time learning new things then python is probably fine and very quick to learn. Go is a nice halfway point.
