Episode 094 – Better Developer Productivity in the Cloud Using Winglang with Elad
Ben-Israel
Aug 25, 2023
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Elad Ben-Israel, CEO at Wing Cloud and original creator of the AWS CDK, discusses the birth of CDK, benefits of open source, and the balance between open source and commercial interests. Explore the concept of eliminating scarcity and fostering community, and the evolution of cloud development with the introduction of Wing Lang.
Winglang is a new programming language and toolchain designed for the cloud that allows developers to run and test code in a local simulator for high-speed iterations.
Winglang provides a unified model for expressing infrastructure and application code, enabling developers to eliminate redundant specifications and improve productivity.
Deep dives
The creation of AWS CDK and its vision
The podcast episode features the creator of AWS CDK, Alon Downton, discussing the origins and vision of the AWS CDK. Alon describes his background as an infrastructure builder and his frustration with the limitations of existing infrastructure-as-code tools like CloudFormation. He shares how he created the CDK as a way to express infrastructure complexity with a programming language and emphasize the importance of a composable programming model. Alon's goal was to provide a better developer experience in the cloud and address the challenges of building serverless applications with multiple cloud resources.
Introducing Wing Language and its purpose
Alon introduces the Wing Language as the next step after the CDK to solve the challenges of building distributed systems in the cloud. Wing Language aims to represent the space dimension of cloud development while traditional programming languages only address the time dimension. By including the spatial dimension, Wing allows developers to express both infrastructure and application code together in a unified manner. This abstraction enables a local simulator to run and test code while understanding its interaction with the underlying infrastructure. Alon highlights that Wing Language is open source and can be used across different cloud platforms.
The benefits of Wing Language and its unique features
Alon discusses the benefits and unique features of the Wing Language. He highlights that Wing SDK abstracts cloud platforms and includes a simulator, allowing developers to iterate at a millisecond level on their local machines. He explains how the language differentiates between pre-flight, the infrastructure definition phase, and in-flight, the runtime code phase. The in-flight modifier enables code execution in distributed systems like Lambda functions or containers. With a single compiler that understands both infrastructure and runtime code, Wing Language provides a unified model, eliminating the need for redundant specifications and improving developer productivity.
Transitioning to entrepreneurship and the future of Wing Cloud
Alon discusses his transition from working at Amazon to becoming a founder and the excitement and alignment he felt in pursuing the Wing Language and Wing Cloud. He emphasizes the importance of aligning passion and purpose and the drive to solve problems and create software tools that help people. He acknowledges the challenges of balancing open source values with the necessity of building a sustainable business. Alon expresses his excitement for the future of Wing and the potential it holds for making the cloud a better place to build software, while acknowledging the importance of feedback from the developer community.
In this episode, Dave and Emily catch up with Elad Ben-Israel, CEO at Wing Cloud
and original creator of the AWS CDK.
Winglang is new programming language and toolchain designed for the cloud from the ground
up. It gives developers a unified way of accessing their cloud infrastructure and code using
a single language, while still being able to run and test inside a local simulator for high
speed iterations.
Elad takes on a historical journey to the original creation of the AWS CDK, the shift from
coding for single machines to modern distributed cloud-based systems, the power of open
source, and the continued evolution of writing software. There may even be an analogy to
burning man and building software as a community.
Elad on Twitter: https://twitter.com/emeshbi
Winglang on Twitter: https://twitter.com/winglangio
Winglang Slack: https://t.winglang.io/slack
Winglang GitHub: https://github.com/winglang/wing
Emily on Twitter: https://twitter.com/editingemily
Dave on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedavedev
Dave on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidisbitski/
[BOOK] The CDK Book Forward by Elad - https://www.thecdkbook.com/foreword.html
[DOCS] What is AWS CloudFormation? -
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/Welcome.html
[PODCAST] Alexa Developers Podcast - Episode 004 - Cloud Development Kit with Elad
Ben-Israel: https://open.spotify.com/episode/55P0F7lWxRBCoDTK7xVhCX
[PODCAST] Alexa Developers Podcast - Episode 005 - Future of Cloud Development Kit with Elad
Ben-Israel: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6G0R9H2S7VPBxdJI81FJQV
[PORTAL] AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) - https://aws.amazon.com/cdk/
[PORTAL] Winglang.io - https://www.winglang.io/
[PORTAL] Wing Cloud - https://www.wing.cloud/
[YOUTUBE] A Quick Intro to Winglang with Elad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzqCXrsKWbo
[WIKIPEDIA] POSIX - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POSIX
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