Episode 11: WebAssembly All The Things with Connor Hicks

Update: 2021-05-27

Description

Sponsored by Reblaze, creators of Curiefense

Panelists

Justin Dorfman | Tzury Bar Yochay

Guest

Connor Hicks

Show Notes

Hello and welcome to Committing to Cloud Native Podcast! It’s the podcast by Reblaze where we talk about open source maintainers, contributors, sustainers, and their experiences in the Cloud Native space. Today as our guest, we have Connor Hicks, Maintainer of Suborbital and Staff Software Developer, Product Discovery Lead at 1Password. We will learn all about Suborbital and how it’s going to make Cloud Native better, and the three projects that he refers to as the building blocks. We also find out more about 1Password, how they are using 1Password with Cloud Native with their projects, and their most recent launch of 1Password Secrets Automation. Connor talks about his partnership with HashiCorp, and we hear his thoughts on the complexity in the Cloud Native world. Go ahead and download this episode now because there is so much more we talk about with Connor!

[00:01:41 ] Connor explains what Suborbital is and how it’s going to make Cloud Native better.

[00:03:04 ] Microsoft, Google, Intel, and Mozilla want to move WebAssembly beyond the browser, and Conner explains what this means.

[00:05:00 ] Connor tells us a little bit about himself and how he got into computers and software, and why he decided iOS development was not for him.

[00:09:46 ] We find out more about how many front-end applications there are today using WebAssembly, and he mentions Figma and Internet Archive.

[00:10:33 ] Connor explains two ways you can take advantage of Suborbitals projects. He explains the three projects that he refers as the building blocks: Graph, Reactr, and Vectr, which together form Atmo.

[00:14:28 ] Justin wonders since Connor is not looking for sponsors, donations, or patrons, how is he sustaining this and what’s the plan. Also, Justin wonders if he’s considered submitting any of his projects to the CNCF.

[00:15:25 ] Tzury asks Connor if he’s doing all this work by himself or if he’s collaborating with others, and Justin asks how he’s managing his community. Connor talks about their recent launch of 1Password Secrets Automation, and how they’re now also offering Cloud Native software to their customers to run, which are the 1Password Connect Server, 1Password SCIM bridge, and 1Password command-line tool.

[00:19:35 ] Connor tells us about his partnership with HashiCorp.

[00:20:23 ] We find out how Connor feels about the complexity in the Cloud Native world.

[00:25:05 ] Tzury asks Connor if Atmo is used to replace obligation from development or if it used to empower existing ones, and if it’s extendable and pluggable. Connor also tells us about using programming languages that they support such as Rust, Go, Swift, and AssemblyScript. Connor mentions using Unicorn Platform in helping him design his website.

[00:29:05 ] Find out why Connor recommends not using Atmo for production use yet.

[00:30:14 ] We learn what the available server-side technologies are to plugin and to integrate with WebAssembly modules or WebAssembly code.

[00:34:09 ] Connor tells us where the 1Password name came from and where he came up with the name Suborbital and Atmo.

[00:40:28 ] Connor tells us how he would like Atmo to replace Lambda in some ways. He tells us he would love to get feedback on the Suborbital projects so you can join the Suborbital discord, file issues in the GitHub repos, or join the GitHub discussions in their Meta Repo and reach out to Connor.

Quotes

[00:01:51 ] “It’s a family of open source projects and each of them individually may not stream WebAssembly, but that is actually the main theme, enabling WebAssembly specifically on the server side.”

[00:10:53 ] “And that’s because the projects are organized to be a set of building blocks and then a platform built on those building blocks. So, the three projects that I refer to as the building blocks are Grav, Reactr, and Vectr.”

[00:14:43 ] “It’s something that I just love doing.”

[00:15:14 ] “Once WebAssembly as a whole kind of builds up a bit more steam and once the user base grows a little bit, it’s definitely something that I want to think about doing.”

[00:17:22 ] ”Yeah, there’s a little bit of use of some of the Suborbital building blocks.”

[00:17:52 ] “And so, we’ve built up quite a lot of experience running Cloud Native at 1Password.”

[00:18:37 ] “There’s been a bunch of lessons learned, because not only are we running Cloud Native software to power 1Password, but we’re now also offering Cloud Native software to our customers to run.”

[00:19:41 ] “So what you can do now is you can actually, there’s a plugin for HashiCorp vaults with 1Password Secrets Automation so you can actually make your 1Password data available through HashiCorp vault using their backend system.”

[00:20:33 ] “So, I definitely have thoughts here and that’s one of the main drivers when I’m building Suborbital.”

[00:22:36 ] “But you can imagine where a system that can intelligently decide where to run the different pieces of compute that comprise your application, and that’s something that I’ve been calling decomposed computing.”

[00:23:54 ] “Absorbing complexity where it makes sense is always the right call.”

[00:26:08 ] “And I won’t go off on too much of a tangent, but I do believe “Go” is the best thing to be using for Cloud Native right now.”

[00:42:40 ] “And if there’s one kind of idea that I could leave off with is that I’m hoping a couple of years from now, WebAssembly will just be an implementation detail. I don’t want WebAssembly to be the headline feature on my website in three years, I want it to be a footnote.”