AddisDev Meetup ii: Golang and Flow-based Programming
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The document discusses flow-based programming (FBP), its history and concepts. FBP defines applications as networks of processes that exchange data through message passing over predefined connections. This allows the processes to be reconnected without changing their code. The document provides examples of FBP networks and components implemented in various languages like Go, Java and JavaScript. It also discusses the benefits of FBP and its growing popularity with implementations like NoFlo.
AddisDev Meetup ii: Golang and Flow-based Programming
- 1. Go(lang), Flow based programming, and some: Flow-based programming experiments in Go(lang) AddisDev Meetup #2, Addis Ababa Nov 11, 2014 (meetup.com/addisdev) Samuel Lampa @smllmp // +samuellampa // saml.rilspace.org // bionics.it Developer at www.farmbio.uu.se // bils.se // rilpartner.com
- 2. The Go programming language #golang
- 3. Turned 5 yesterday (Nov 10)! :) http://blog.golang.org/5years
- 4. Interest increasing every month
- 5. Invented at Google by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike and Ken Thompson
- 6. Go(lang) characteristics ● Open source ● Compiled (like C, C++, Pascal, etc) ● Garbage collected (Like Java) ● Statically typed (Like C++, Java, C# etc) ● Statically linked (includes dependent code in the executable when compiling, not just linking to it when running) ● Has primitives for writing concurrent code built into the language (channels and go-routines) ● Multiplexes go-routines on operating system threads (rather than start one thread per go-routine). ● Has a C-like syntax ● Has a small set of keywords ● Has explicit error handling (no Exception handling) ● Supports Reflection ● Has no Generic programming ● Has, for its age, a rather extensive standard library (Less need to reinvent the wheel) ● Is supported by Google, Canonical and a few other companies.
- 7. Go(lang) benefits ● Easy Concurrency … due to in-built primitives, multi-plexing, and in-built garbage collector. ● Good at handling many concurrent connections … due to concurrency primitives and the multiplexing. ● Generally good performance, especially compared to scripting languages … due to static typing, being compiled and good concurrency primitives. ● Easy to learn … due to small language, and similarity with existing C-like languages. ● Very easy to deploy to production (servers) … due to static linking (Just copy the executable to the destination server!) ● Predictable code … due to the explicit error handling (see also downside for same reason) ● Getting a lot of media attention … and with that, a fast growing community) due to big backers like Google.
- 8. Go(lang) potential drawbacks ● The lack of Generic programming means that some redundancy might be needed at times, when implementing the same algorithm for slightly varying data types. ● Somewhat verbose code might be needed at times due to the explicit error handling (see also upside for same reason) ● Performance can be affected (to the worse) by the pauses incurred by the garbage collector (but being worked on!) ● Might not produce as optimized code as some other languages, due mostly to the young age of the language (although that improves with each release!)
- 9. Concurrency is not parallelism
- 10. Parallellism
- 11. Concurrency
- 14. Based on idea of “Communicating Sequential Processes” (CSP) Especially suited for concurrent apps that utilize multiple CPU cores
- 16. Go-routines
- 17. Channels
- 18. Some Go(lang) links ● golang.org ● tour.golang.org ● groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/golang-nuts ● gplus.to/golang ● talks.golang.org/2012/concurrency.slide#1
- 19. Generator Function in Go
- 20. More advanced generator function
- 22. Using it ...
- 24. What is this?
- 25. What is this? Right answer: Function calls, or a “call graph”
- 26. What if we could take control of this... …and define the graph declaratively? Wow! :) qq
- 27. Invented at the 60's at IBM q FBP Inventor J. Paul Morrison
- 28. The flow based programming book - A must read → tinyurl.com/fbpbook
- 29. “In computer programming, flowbased programming (FBP) is a programming paradigm that defines applications as networks of "black box" processes, which exchange data across predefined connections by message passing, where the connections are specified externally to the processes. These black box processes can be reconnected endlessly to form different applications without having to be changed internally. FBP is thus naturally componentoriented” Wikipedia
- 32. Core FBP Concepts ● “Black box” processes (comp. to functions) ● Named in / outports as interfaces to processes ● Channels with bounded buffers ● Separate network definition
- 33. Some FBP network examples...
- 34. Some FBP network examples...
- 35. An array of benefits ... ● Change of connection wiring without rewriting components ● Inherently concurrent - suited for the multi-core CPU world! ● Testing, monitoring and logging very easy: Just plug in a mock-, logging-or debugging component. ● Etc. qq
- 36. Many similar tools: Unix pipes
- 37. Many similar tools: LabView
- 38. Many similar tools: Yahoo Pipes
- 39. Many similar tools: Apple Quartz Composer
- 40. Mitov Software (Video effects)
- 41. Implementations in many languages ● Java (JavaFBP) - github.com/jpaulm/javafbp ● C# (C#FBP) - github.com/jpaulm/csharpfbp ● C++ – CppFBP - github.com/jpaulm/cppfbp – Dspatch - www.flowbasedprogramming.com/DSPatch/ – Blockie.io – blockie.io ● Javascript – NoFlo - noflojs.org – Node Red – nodered.org ● Go (GoFlow) - github.com/trustmaster/goflow ● Python (PaPy) - papy.org ● Common lisp - ● Shell script (net2sh) - sam.nipl.net/code/net2sh/net2sh ● D (Dendrite) - bitbucket.org/eris0xaa/dendrite ● …?
- 42. Resurgence in FBP interest with NoFlo
- 44. NoFlo creator Henri Bergius
- 45. NoFlo summary ● Based on Node.js ● Written in coffeescript ● 237 reusable components ● Successful (116% of 100k USD) Kickstarter for in-browser UI ● FBP definition format in JSON ● Proof-of concept: Re-implementation of Jekyll Static site generator: 16 000 LOC → 107 components (4 custom ones of ~500 LOC, rest re-usable!)
- 46. The UI for NoFlo: FlowHub
- 47. Book on Data Flow, FBP and Reactive Programming
- 48. Node-RED, by IBM Emerging tech
- 50. My adventures in GoFlow
- 51. My adventures in GoFlow: Network
- 52. My adventures in GoFlow: Component
- 53. My adventures in GoFlow: Aspiring bioinformatics library :)
- 54. Framework-less Flow-based programming in Go!
- 56. A few example components...
- 57. A few example components...
- 58. A few example components...
- 59. A few example components...
- 60. Some links ● Main website: www.jpaulmorrison.com/fbp ● Mailing list: tinyurl.com/fbplist ● Google+: gplus.to/flowbased
- 61. Thank you!
- 62. Bonus slides
- 63. What's trending ● Stream based processing ● “New” (old) paradigms for multi-core programming – Flow-based programming – Actor-based programming ● Erlang / Elixir ● Akka ● Distributed programming (apps running across many computers) – Erlang / Elixir – GoCircuit ● Reactive programming ● New compiled languages – Go (Google...) – Rust (Mozilla) – D ...
- 64. Some recommended news sources ● InfoQ – infoq.com ● StrangeLoop talks at InfoQ – infoq.com/strange_loop ● Prismatic – getprismatic.com – Follow topics: ● Programming ● Distributed programming, etc... ● StatusCode Newsletter - statuscode.org ● Hacker News – news.ycombinator.com ● Hacker Newsletter – hackernewsletter.com ● My twitter - twitter.com/smllmp ;)