We had the opportunity to interview the second-place winner of the Golem 1.0 Hackathon: Glenn Lewis!
Can you share your name and where you’re joining us from?
My name is Glenn Lewis, and I’m joining from Florida.
Do you mind telling us what Golem is in your own words?
To me, Golem is a platform that enables developers to create fault-tolerant, distributed applications and enables them to focus on the business logic and write simple in-memory functions, without having to worry about accessing databases, message queues, or other infrastructure that would normally be involved in creating similar systems.
Based on your own professional experiences, what are the top uses for Golem?
I think the Twitter example was really cool, so I think that it’s a great fit for social networks. I think Federated Networks would also be a good use. Then there are other kinds like auctions, ad networks, and gaming benefits that could benefit. Also, Pub/Sub-type systems would be easier to develop on Golem.
What made you register for the Golem 1.0 Hackathon?
I really wanted to learn more about Golem, so I thought a great way to get more familiar with it was to participate and try to build something with it. Hackathons are great because they give you a specific target and you’re kind of forced to dig as deep as you can in that allotted to learn as much as possible. I thought it was a great way to learn about the technology.
How did you find out about Golem?
I think I stumbled upon a series of videos by John De Goes, and then I found the Golem Discord and saw the announcement there.
What was your overall experience working with Golem in the Hackathon?
It was great! I learned a lot. I feel like I didn’t learn enough. There are things, even at the end of the hackathon, there were some things I discovered that Golem could do that I had no clue about, which would have helped my entry, but that’s okay. It was a great learning experience.
Participating feels like drinking from a fire hose because you’re learning a lot in a short period of time and trying to absorb it all, but it was a fun experience. I enjoyed it.
What was your favorite aspect of developing on Golem?
I think my favorite aspect is writing synchronous functions, and not having to worry about the async stuff. You just write simple functions that deal strictly with in-memory structures or records, without having to access the database. I think that’s my favorite part of it.
Is there any feedback you have for improving Golem?
I thought it would be awesome if the Golem team could actually make a reference solution of how they would solve the Twitter hackathon project, writing a solution for each of their supporting languages. That would be amazing. That will probably be a lot of work, but having a kind of reference solution from the experts themselves who built the system would be a real eye-opener and really beneficial for other developers wanting to learn it.
For example, the thing I didn’t know you could do at the time is that you could route API calls directly to dynamic workers. As in, you create new workers and then route API calls to them. I had no clue that Golem could do that. If the team puts together these solutions in all of their supported languages, that would be fabulous.
In addition, it would be great if they supported Moonbit, which is the language I used in the Hackathon.
Is there any advice you would give developers who are tinking about joining a hackathon?
Learn as much as you can before the hackathon. Now that there is the first hackathon that has been completed, I would suggest going back and watching the first one and trying to come up with a solution yourself, or if the team does put together these reference tutorials, I would say to copy them and duplicate them and understand how they work. You’d be much better prepared for the next hackathon.
Will you be joining us for another hackathon?
I hope to, yes! I would very much like to join again.
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