It’s a replacement for the Lemmy backend. It’s designed to be API-compatible initially so existing Lemmy clients, including Lemmy-UI can just plug right in.
It’s in Java, so there’s that overhead. I don’t speak for the project, but mostly, it’s less about “efficiency at all costs” and more about maintainability, being easier to contribute to / review, and having a less toxic development community. It’s got more developers working on it than Lemmy, and it’s in a language more people are familiar with (Java). It’s roadmap is also not constrained by the viewpoints of a small group of fairly, uh, controversial figures.
After the 1:1 compatibility phase is over, they’re both free to and planning to implement more features that the Lemmy devs either won’t or can’t be arsed to do.
What exactly do you mean by “toxic development community”? I’ve heard some critique of Lemmy developers for being tankies but I’ve never heard something like this about Lemmy.
I don’t want this to become a rant thread, but the devs have frequently told contributors “No one is forcing you to develop for Lemmy”. That’s but one example.
I’m new to lemmy, so I could be missing some context, but you arent making a very good pitch with this post. Java is a downgrade from rust, and unless I’m reading wrong you seem to suggest they are planning to deliberately introduce new features into this java implementation as a way to break up the network on purpose, which would make lemmy instances obsolete, and you sort of present it as a good thing and suggest its a deliberate political move on behalf of sublinks. But you didn’t even explain in your post why lemmy exactly needs to be replaced. So you are calling lemmy toxic, but already this new project is just seeming very underhanded and manipulative by its very existence. As a user who just wants a better reddit alternative, reading this post makes me feel like I stumbled upon a project motivated by a grudge (just based on the way it’s phrased) and you leave me more inclined to speak out against it than endorse it, since it seems like an attempt to divide the network, and I’ve seen what happens to divided networks where instances have different features and refuse to work together (just look at XMPP). So unless you can explain what is wrong with lemmy’s development or roadmap I think everybody reading this should be very skeptical of sublinks and cautious of the threat posed by projects like this in general.
Java is an good old joker. You can use that perfectly almost everywhere. Everyone knows it, understands it and its readable. Because of it, Sublinks can get more developers into the project and develop the project more quicker and there are more eyes looking over the code. In comparison lemmy has active like 3-4 active developers. Sublinks is currently at 5-6 active and 10 at their peak. And every developer can learn java quicker than the hipster language rust.
I might be missing this each time I check, but what is different about sublinks? Visually the demo looks the same
Is it a front-end that’s easier to contribute to? Can instances come back to Lemmy if it doesn’t work out?
It’s a replacement for the Lemmy backend. It’s designed to be API-compatible initially so existing Lemmy clients, including Lemmy-UI can just plug right in.
I see
How would this compare efficiency wise, because my understanding was that Lemmys backend was very efficient and that was a big advantage
It’s in Java, so there’s that overhead. I don’t speak for the project, but mostly, it’s less about “efficiency at all costs” and more about maintainability, being easier to contribute to / review, and having a less toxic development community. It’s got more developers working on it than Lemmy, and it’s in a language more people are familiar with (Java). It’s roadmap is also not constrained by the viewpoints of a small group of fairly, uh, controversial figures.
After the 1:1 compatibility phase is over, they’re both free to and planning to implement more features that the Lemmy devs either won’t or can’t be arsed to do.
What exactly do you mean by “toxic development community”? I’ve heard some critique of Lemmy developers for being tankies but I’ve never heard something like this about Lemmy.
I don’t want this to become a rant thread, but the devs have frequently told contributors “No one is forcing you to develop for Lemmy”. That’s but one example.
Can you point to any examples? Genuinely curious.
I’m new to lemmy, so I could be missing some context, but you arent making a very good pitch with this post. Java is a downgrade from rust, and unless I’m reading wrong you seem to suggest they are planning to deliberately introduce new features into this java implementation as a way to break up the network on purpose, which would make lemmy instances obsolete, and you sort of present it as a good thing and suggest its a deliberate political move on behalf of sublinks. But you didn’t even explain in your post why lemmy exactly needs to be replaced. So you are calling lemmy toxic, but already this new project is just seeming very underhanded and manipulative by its very existence. As a user who just wants a better reddit alternative, reading this post makes me feel like I stumbled upon a project motivated by a grudge (just based on the way it’s phrased) and you leave me more inclined to speak out against it than endorse it, since it seems like an attempt to divide the network, and I’ve seen what happens to divided networks where instances have different features and refuse to work together (just look at XMPP). So unless you can explain what is wrong with lemmy’s development or roadmap I think everybody reading this should be very skeptical of sublinks and cautious of the threat posed by projects like this in general.
Sublinks will be scalable, so every instance with any size can just scale to their need.
I see, thanks for the info :)
Java is a fucking awful language.
Java is an good old joker. You can use that perfectly almost everywhere. Everyone knows it, understands it and its readable. Because of it, Sublinks can get more developers into the project and develop the project more quicker and there are more eyes looking over the code. In comparison lemmy has active like 3-4 active developers. Sublinks is currently at 5-6 active and 10 at their peak. And every developer can learn java quicker than the hipster language rust.
Hipster language? It’s a lot more popular than you suggest.
So far its new, not well integrated into the market and no one wants it. Its even less demand from the market than i thought.