Ballerina: A language to develop, consume and combine network services

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Ballerina is a modern, general-purpose programming language that makes it easy to develop and consume network services. It's a pragmatic language with familiar C-style syntax combined with explicit error handling, static types, concurrency safety to make programs reliable and maintainable. The current compiler produces JVM bytecodes; hence, it can fit anywhere Java is used. Also, the Java interoperability in the language makes Ballerina compatible with most existing java libraries.

Typically, applications reuse code by linking software libraries. But today, more and more applications reuse code by consuming services over the network, typically JSON over HTTP. APIs that matter are primarily network APIs. This shift to the cloud has changed programming, and there is a need for new abstractions in languages to improve developers' productivity.

Ballerina offers network primitives in the language to simplify developing and deploying services in the cloud. Services with resource and remote functions, clients, and interactions are higher-level concepts in the language designed to hide the complexities of working over the network. The syntax and semantics of these abstractions are designed to maintain source-diagram duality, enabling developers to visualize any ballerina program as a sequence diagram. Ballerina also simplifies deploying Ballerina code onto the cloud, allowing those without in-depth knowledge about Kubernetes to write the logic and deploy that code onto cloud platforms such as Kubernetes.

Bio:
Sameera Jayasoma is the head of architecture for Ballerina at WSO2. He is one of the designers of the Ballerina language and platform capabilities. He's been working at WSO2 for 14 years and contributed to WSO2 Carbon and Update Manager projects. He likes to engage in wildlife and landscape photography and enjoys pacific northwest hiking. Twitter: https://twitter.com/sameerajayasoma