> Did you choose Lua because you love using it, or for some other pragmatic reasons?

A bit of both, though I'm literally drinking out of a coffee mug with the Lua logo on it that was given to me after playing a big part in making Lua a thing at a prevoius job. That might speak to my love of Lua.

> Do you think a service like yours with support for many variety of languages a good idea?

From a technical perspective, it would be relatively easy to add support for other languages, the biggest problem would be UI and documentation complexity. Each added language would either require a completely seperate set of documentaion or would require the docs to describe everything one layer of abstraction removed from the code people would actually be writing. Both of which would be less than ideal for my goal of extreme simplicity.

I think it can be a good idea, but to support something like that _well_ would require a pretty large team of people.

I do plan to support some level of 'other languages' for libraries, at a minimum some subset of native Lua libraries (ie. libs written in C). That means it would be possible to find a way to use pretty much any other language interpreter. However, I'm not sure that will ever be a top level feature, there'll probably always be some level of Lua glue code holding everything together.

Are there any auth protocols / flows you think would be important to support?

I've always had a bunch of small side projects that I want to do that aren't worth the overhead required to actually put them together & keep them maintained. So, I built a small Lua-based FaaS platform to make each individual project less work whenever inspiration strikes. So far I've built:

* A current-time API for some hacked-together IoT devices: https://time.bodge.link/

* A script for my wife that checks her commute time and emails her before it's about to get bad.

* An email notification to myself if my Matrix server goes down.

* A 'randomly choose a thing' page. https://rand.bodge.link/choose?head&tails

* A work phone number voicemail, the script converts the webhook into an email to me.

* An email notification any time a new version is released for a few semi-public self-hosted services.

* Scrapers for a few companies' job listings that notify me whenever a new job is posted matching some filters.

* A WebPush server that I eventually want to use for custom notifications to myself.

* An SVG hit counter: https://hits.bodge.link/

Since I'm already maintaining it for myself, I figured I might as well open it up for others. It's free to play with, at least for now.

Coincidentally, I'm currently working on supporting luarocks packages. (Well, some of them, I want to at least support the ones that are pure lua or use the "builtin" build system (which means they don't have any native dependencies).)

Sadly no, it shutdown in 2017. If you try to login, it doesn't actually go anywhere.

Best I can tell the domain was picked up by some SEO scam. I'm guessing the way it works is they republish all the old content to keep the domain's reputation and then added a bunch of links to their sites to try to boost those site's reputation.

My first professional job was for a company building an industrial IoT platform who's most unique feature was their Lua-based scripting platform. I ended up loving Lua so much that at my next job, at SmartThings, I ended up being the main instigator who made the Lua-based Edge Drivers happen when we were forced to sunset the old Groovy-based DTHs, writing the initial PoC, laying out the architecture, and writing the core of the system.

This is basically my take on an old service that folded in 2017 called webscript.io, another tool that got me loving Lua. I used that service a whole bunch both for personal projects and little tools at work. I was really sad when it went down and I genuinely don't think a single week had gone by where I hadn't wished that it still existed. So, I finally decided that I needed to build my own version of it.

The whole idea behind Bodge is that it should be as simple as possible to hack something together. I've always had a bunch of small side projects that I want to do that aren't worth the overhead required to actually put them together & keep them maintained. So, I built Bodge as a way to make each individual project less work whenever inspiration strikes. So far I've built:

* A current-time API for some hacked-together IoT devices: https://time.bodge.link/

* A script for my wife that checks her commute time and emails her before it's about to get bad.

* An email notification to myself if my Matrix server goes down.

* A 'randomly choose a thing' page. https://rand.bodge.link/choose?head&tails

* A "work" phone number voicemail, where the script converts the webhook into an alert to myself.

* An email notification any time a new version is released for a few semi-public self-hosted services.

* Scrapers for a few companies' job listings that notify me whenever a new job is posted matching some filters.

* A WebPush server that I eventually want to use for custom notifications to myself.

* And just for fun, an SVG hit counter: https://hits.bodge.link/

Scripts can be as simple as:

  return "Hello, world!"

Currently I provide Lua modules for: making HTTP requests, handling json, sending alerts to yourself, simple string/string key/value storage, cross-script mutexes, and a few other basic things.

Accounts are free, but you don't even need to make one to just play around with writing scripts. There's a demo on the homepage that lets you run real scripts for yourself, though with a few extra limitations.

I'd love to hear what anyone thinks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46080141

Points: 8

# Comments: 5

Just for my own curiosity, do you have an examples of suggestions for how to improve the syntax that have been brought up and dismissed by the language maintainers?

My first professional job was for a company building an industrial IoT platform who's most unique feature was their Lua-based scripting platform. I ended up loving Lua so much that at my next job, at SmartThings, I ended up being the main instigator who made the Lua-based Edge Drivers happen when we were forced to sunset the old Groovy-based DTHs, writing the initial PoC, laying out the architecture, and writing the core of the system.

This is basically my take on an old service that folded in 2017 called webscript.io, another tool that got me loving Lua. I used that service a whole bunch both for personal projects and little tools at work. I was really sad when it went down and I genuinely don't think a single week had gone by where I hadn't wished that it still existed. So, I finally decided that I needed to build my own version of it.

The whole idea behind Bodge is that it should be as simple as possible to hack something together. I've always had a bunch of small side projects that I want to do that aren't worth the overhead required to actually put them together & keep them maintained. So, I built Bodge as a way to make each individual project less work whenever inspiration strikes. So far I've built:

* A current-time API for some hacked-together IoT devices: https://time.bodge.app/

* A script for my wife that checks her commute time and emails her before it's about to get bad.

* An email notification to myself if my Matrix server goes down.

* A 'randomly choose a thing' page. https://rand.bodge.app/choose?head&tails

* A "work" phone number voicemail, where the script converts the webhook into an alert to myself.

* An email notification any time a new version is released for a few semi-public self-hosted services.

* Scrapers for a few companies' job listings that notify me whenever a new job is posted matching some filters.

* A WebPush server that I eventually want to use for custom notifications to myself.

* And just for fun, an SVG hit counter: https://hits.bodge.link/

Scripts can be as simple as:

  return "Hello, world!"
    

Currently I provide Lua modules for: making HTTP requests, handling json, sending alerts to yourself, simple string/string key/value storage, cross-script mutexes, and a few other basic things.

Accounts are free, but you don't even need to make one to just play around with writing scripts. There's a demo on the homepage that lets you run real scripts for yourself, though with a few extra limitations.

I'd love to hear what anyone thinks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46036240

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Edit: Now that I think about it, this might have been a feature added to the OLED model.

I'm not sure I would have actually started building this if I knew that was an option. Hopefully their existence is telling me "there's a market, go for it" and not "there's already a better alternative, don't do it", heh. Though their pricing tiers really tells me I need to optimize my sandboxing. I don't think I can match those request limits at those prices just from the CPU cost of my per-request sandboxing overhead.

I'm calling it a "Micro Functions as a Service" platform.

What it really is, is hosted Lua scripts that run in response to incoming HTTP requests to static URLs.

It's basically my version of the old https://webscript.io/ (that site is mostly the same as it was as long as you ignore the added SEO spam on the homepage). I used to subscribe to webscript and I'd been constantly missing it since it went away years ago, so I made my own.

I mostly just made this for myself, but since I'd put so much effort into it, I figure I'm going to try to put it out there and see if anyone wants to pay me to use it. Turns out there's a _lot_ of work that goes into abuse prevention when you're code from literally anyone on the internet, so it's not ready to actually take signups yet. But, there is a demo on the homepage.

> Significant productivity gains: Over 80% of respondents indicate that AI has enhanced their productivity.

_Feeling_ more productive is inline with the one proper study I've seen.

P.S. Thank you for ProtonDB, it has been so incredibly helpful for getting some older games running.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44735709

Points: 1

# Comments: 0