The PRQL: Data Infrastructure Systems and the Rust / WebAssembly Combo with A.J. Hunyady of InfinyOn

Eric Dodds 00:05
Welcome to The Data Stack Show prequel where we replay a snippet from the show we just recorded. Kostas, are you ready to give people a sneak peek? Let’s do it. As always a fascinating conversation with AJ from Infineon we covered a lot of subjects. Hadoop, IoT real time streaming, rust WebAssembly cost us I’m actually interested in what interested you most in terms of the conversation about rust and WebAssembly. I mean, Rust is obviously very popular in gaining in popularity, but anything that stuck out to you?

Kostas Pardalis 00:47
Yeah, especially like in comparison with like Kafka. And let’s say like this previous generation of like, data infrastructure systems and system programming in general, that was like very biased towards, like technologies like the JVM. And we see that today, because of technologies like grass. There are like systems programming has become much more accessible to more people. And the overall like the whole, let’s say Rasta ecosystem has created like that many new opportunities. And I think Infineon, like both the company, and the product is an example of many similar things that we are going to see in the future components embracing like these new bodies and these new frameworks. And in a way, like, let’s say, you’ve rebuilt and adapt technologies and paradigms from the past, but make them like much more efficient, and much more compatible with like the needs in the scale that we have today. And tomorrow, Rast is, I think it’s like interesting, not just because of, let’s say, the performance, or like most people talk about, I think, and that’s like the interesting part one, we are comparing with like the JVM ecosystem, JVM became like popular because people could go and write code without having like to deal with all the issues and the problems that usually arise by having like to manage memory, which is pretty hard problem. Now, Ross is like a new type of language that gives you let’s say, the low level access and performance that you get, with a language like C, right? That where you have to go and manage memory, while at the same time, like the compiler is like smart enough, that guides you to manage the memory correctly. So when actually the program compiles. And it’s going to be safe, like it’s going to operate like as it should, without, like security issues, or a crossing and like all that stuff, and like avoiding many bugs, and made that like available, like two more, let’s say developers like compared to the past. And that’s one of the things I think it’s like a great enabler of a language like rust. The other thing is that Rust has like this. Amazing, let’s say ecosystem. And that’s where WebAssembly comes into the picture and which brings like, make like very interesting. Infineon also what they are building, because as AJ said, like, in a way, this combination of rust and WebAssembly gives them the opportunity to build a system that’s like extremely extensible. So someone can go like, for example, writes, like a plugin or a function for the Infineon platform, using and combining that into WebAssembly. And this is going to run inside the Infineon platform. And this is going to be super performant and super safe and secure at the same time because of the guarantees that WebAssembly has. So these two examples like the new way of like writing systems, programming for systems. And the interoperability that WebAssembly provides, I think is going to revolutionize a lot like what is happening on the server, although WebAssembly was like primarily built for the client. And it’s just the beginning like what Infineon is actually doing today. I think it’s going to be something we will see more and more in the future for sure. For anyone who is interested in like, what’s next. They should definitely take what Infineon does and what AJ has to say about things out there.

Eric Dodds 04:32
Absolutely, definitely a must listen, for anyone interested in those topics. So yeah, definitely subscribe if you haven’t tell a friend. We always love new listeners, and we will catch you on the next one.