WikiLambda, backend for Wikifunctions, rewrites itself from Node.js (!!) to Rust
WikiLambda, backend for Wikifunctions, rewrites itself from Node.js (!!) to Rust
The Abstract Wikipedia team is working toward a rewrite of our backend services in a different programming language, likely Rust. Node/JS has served us well, but we have run up against some [WebAssembly System Interface] limits that would be best dealt with by switching to a different ecosystem.
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Node.js is really not a bad backend language, since it's JIT, it's actually faster than Python and Java in most cases.
Rust will definitely have the advantage of being a compiled language though.
Source: I write both Java and TS backend code, have done benchmarks.
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Somehow, it feels horrifying to use something that high-level for the backend, especially when MediaWiki has so much PHP and the WMF has so many PHP programmers. Maybe my adolescent arse is getting old...
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Oh PHP is hands down one of the slowest languages out there. It's just convenient because it's easy to host, but it's awful to use and it's really slow.
Here, have a chart:
In this chart, where the benchmark is calculating digits of π, Java is faster than JS, but there are cases where it's the opposite.
https://github.com/niklas-heer/speed-comparison?tab=readme-ov-file
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since it's JIT, it's actually faster than Python and Java in most cases.
Java is JIT'd too, and Python can be depending on which runtime you deploy.
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True, I didn't structure my sentence correctly.
It gets to compete with Java and Python because it's also JIT is what I meant to say.
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