Polyglot Developer

Environments

Warsaw, 2023

Developer environment

  • editor
  • debugging tools
  • version control system tools
  • native libraries
  • additional binaries
  • remote resources

What this talk is about?

Unix philosophy

synergy between tools

tools

The regular approach

Pros:

  • (tightly) integrated environment
  • works out of the box
  • great support for major languages & frameworks
  • debugging tools

Cons: 

  • limited extendability
  • does not play well with things that it wasn't integrated with
  • lack of support for less popular languages

Reasons to use various languages

  • right tool for the job
  • personal preference
  • willingness to learn & experiment
  • legacy/existing project written in XY

Setting up the environment

  • (if lucky) follow instructions in README.md
  • run a provided shell script and pray for it not to fail with some obscure error
  • how to make the editor aware of the environment? 

 

  • how to propagate updates across developer environments
  • use docker?
$ cd workspace/projectA
$ code .

Reasons to fail

  • outdated/unclear instructions
  • script does not support our system
  • we have such an environment for X but it uses a different version of Y
  • having to master rbenv, sdkman, nvm, ...
  • inherent flaws

Meet Nix

  • declarative package manager
  • reproducible build tool
  • functional language

Recipe

Binary

Linking

Example

{
  inputs.nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs";
  inputs.flake-utils.url = "github:numtide/flake-utils";

  outputs = { nixpkgs, flake-utils, ... }:
    flake-utils.lib.eachDefaultSystem (system:
      let
        pkgs = import nixpkgs { inherit system; };
      in
      {
        devShell = pkgs.mkShell {
          buildInputs = with pkgs; [
            (sbt.override {
              jre = temurin-jre-bin-17;
            })
            nodejs
            yarn
          ];
        };
      }
    );
}


devShell = pkgs.mkShell {
  buildInputs = with pkgs; [
    (sbt.override {
      jre = temurin-jre-bin-17;
    })
    nodejs
    yarn
  ];
};

How it works?

~ $ cd projectA














~ $ cd projectA
~/projectA $ which sbt
sbt not found












~ $ cd projectA
~/projectA $ which sbt
sbt not found
~/projectA $ which nodejs
nodejs not found










~ $ cd projectA
~/projectA $ which sbt
sbt not found
~/projectA $ which nodejs
nodejs not found
~/projectA $ nix develop
[15.1/0.0 MiB DL] downloading 'https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/...'








~ $ cd projectA
~/projectA $ which sbt
sbt not found
~/projectA $ which nodejs
nodejs not found
~/projectA $ nix develop
[15.1/0.0 MiB DL] downloading 'https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/...'
~/projectA $ which node                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           21:17:14
/nix/store/4bgg8j8275adawqbc5rkm4fv48dgg2i3-nodejs-18.18.2/bin/node
~/projectA $ which sbt                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            21:17:11
/nix/store/k9xwny18ihx78qh8pyxrnz7mrbqj962p-sbt-1.9.7/bin/sbt




~ $ cd projectA
~/projectA $ which sbt
sbt not found
~/projectA $ which nodejs
nodejs not found
~/projectA $ nix develop
[15.1/0.0 MiB DL] downloading 'https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/...'
~/projectA $ which node                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           21:17:14
/nix/store/4bgg8j8275adawqbc5rkm4fv48dgg2i3-nodejs-18.18.2/bin/node
~/projectA $ which sbt                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            21:17:11
/nix/store/k9xwny18ihx78qh8pyxrnz7mrbqj962p-sbt-1.9.7/bin/sbt
~/projectA $ exit
~/projectA $ which sbt
sbt not found

How it works?

Nix store

/nix/store/zzpm91md3wqllaqpzm7whvcpa
/nix/store/zzpss56rnqxmhsg01v72762ha
/nix/store/zzqbcqjn05771v42fy9q97chk
/nix/store/zzqk32qc4imypcifq9jz1wif5
/nix/store/zzqnsgnpsfnrhwg8s4g9ci0dn
/nix/store/zzrajbcphf2f6spria8c7szwr
/nix/store/zzrgf0qw8vd3rd3fznzif1fh5
/nix/store/zzsgwdfagsw6xq6fvs7yycpvq
/nix/store/zzsm2ynsib3ddkjxw7g0j8v47

 

$ cd ~/workspace/projectA
# will use jdk11 and python2.7
$ cd ~/workspace/projectB
# will use jdk19 and node16
$ cd ~/workspace/projectC
# will use python3 and node17

PATH:=

Use direnv to automatically enable nix shell when entering project directory

?

Nix

Direnv

Meet Neovim

  • runs inside terminal
  • build on top of years of experience from building vim
  • easy to extend via lua scripts
  • follows unix philosophy of modularity and simplicity 
  • builtin support for language server protocol

Language Server Protocol

LSP

Editors

Language servers

  • completions
  • diagnostics
  • navigation
  • code lenses
  • code actions
  • refactorings
  • and many more...

is this enough to develop software?

Language Server Protocol

Treesitter

  • General enough to parse any programming language
  • Fast enough to parse on every keystroke in a text editor
  • Robust enough to provide useful results even in the presence of syntax errors
  • Dependency-free so that the runtime library (which is written in pure C) can be embedded in any application

Treesitter

language grammar

treesitter

parser.c

source code

AST + highlights

LSP

Nix

?

Direnv

What else?

?

  • debugging
  • quick feedback loop
  • ai assistance
  • git ops
  • quality of life features

Debug Adapter Protocol

https://github.com/Tencent/LuaHelper/blob/master/docs/manual/debugPrinciple.md

LSP

Nix

DAP

?

Tmux

terminal multiplexer

  • splits, windows, sessions
  • plugins
  • lightweight, stable and fast

Nix

Tmux

LSP

DAP

neogit

diffview

neotree

Nix

Tmux

LSP

DAP

neogit

diffview

neotree

Demo time 

feedback: https://yavaconf.com/user.html#!/lecture/YAVA23-b121/rate

slides: https://slides.com/kasperkondzielski-1/polyglot-developer

config: https://github.com/ghostbuster91/dot-files

Thank you

@kkondzielski

Polyglot Developer

By Kasper Kondzielski

Made with Slides.com

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