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Reposted by Robert Balicki

rain 🌦️ @sunshowers.io · 12d

New blog post: Cancelling async #rustlang!

This is a written version of my talk at #RustConf 2025, where I talk about the joys and sorrows of future cancellations in Rust, with lessons from our work at @oxide.computer. Includes a video of the talk as well. Check it out!

Cancelling async Rust ꞏ sunshowers

Correctness in the face of cancellations: a written version of my talk at RustConf 2025.

sunshowers.io

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Reposted by Robert Balicki

Reed Harmeyer @reedharmeyer.bsky.social · 12d

@statisticsftw.bsky.social remember when I said we couldn’t query atproto with GraphQL?

Well @slices.network might have just changed that!

I’d use Isograph in a heartbeat with atproto.

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 22d

Bahaha savage

Reposted by Robert Balicki

Software Engineering Daily @softwaredaily.bsky.social · 23d

Robert Balicki is a Staff Engineer at Pinterest and creator of the open-source project Isograph. He joins Gregor Vand to discuss challenges and solutions for managing data in frontend apps.

@statisticsftw.bsky.social

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/09/23/i...

Rethinking GraphQL Frontends with Robert Balicki - Software Engineering Daily

A challenge in modern frontend application design is efficiently fetching and managing GraphQL data while keeping UI components responsive and maintainable. Developers often face issues like over-fetc...

softwareengineeringdaily.com

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 22d

When getting started, I listened to almost every episode of Software Engineering Daily for years! Look at me now, ma! :)

Software Engineering Daily @softwaredaily.bsky.social · 23d

Robert Balicki is a Staff Engineer at Pinterest and creator of the open-source project Isograph. He joins Gregor Vand to discuss challenges and solutions for managing data in frontend apps.

@statisticsftw.bsky.social

softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/09/23/i...

Rethinking GraphQL Frontends with Robert Balicki - Software Engineering Daily

A challenge in modern frontend application design is efficiently fetching and managing GraphQL data while keeping UI components responsive and maintainable. Developers often face issues like over-fetc...

softwareengineeringdaily.com

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

That's enough for now, but expect more threads in which I do a deep dive on all of the other awesome features that we shipped in v0.4!

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

So go for it! Give Isograph a try! Star the repo! Join the discord! isograph.dev/discord

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

It's just another way in which Isograph allows you to improve performance (fetch less data) while improving developer experience (and velocity!)

Thank you Patryk Wałach for putting in an absolutely heroic amount of work on pointers over the course of a year 🤩

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

But even in its current state, it enables something very unique: the ability to define a "GraphQL resolver" locally. This allows you to iterate on features before adding it to the actual schema, at which point, you're restricted by the "no backwards incompatible changes" rule.

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

- server execution (another way to get rid of the network waterfall!)
- support for abstract pointer types

And so much more!

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

And this is just the beginning! There are several improvements that are planned:
- starting the network request when the query is normalized, instead of when the component renders
- inlining the selection set, i.e. to get rid of the network waterfall

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

Why might you do this? Well, you might imagine that there are thousands of suspects. So, fetching a bunch of fields on each of them, only to throw all but one of them away, is incredibly wasteful.

So, split this up into multiple queries and save on bandwidth and on server costs!

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

They're defined extremely similarly to client fields! Except instead of returning an arbitrary value, you return a link to another GraphQL object.

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

This release introduces client pointers, which were the biggest missing primitive in Isograph! Client pointers are like client fields that return a link to another object, and off of which you can select additional fields.

Here, we select fields off of the dirtiestDodger pointer

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

Next — a new primitive! Isograph apps are composed of client fields, which are functions from graph data to an arbitrary value. You can't select anything off of client fields, i.e. they are "leaves."

SuspectsCard and DirtiestDodgerCard are client fields in this example.

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

🙌 Thank you Vadim Evseev for refactoring the Isograph compiler and adding our caching layer, which allowed us to ship such a performant VSCode extension so easily 😎 (but more on that in another thread)

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

And this is just the start! We spent the last year laying the groundwork for future improvements. So expect a bunch of other features, like autocomplete, surfacing errors, etc. to be fast follows.

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

First up: the VSCode extension.

Without the VSCode extension, working with Isograph literals feels like manipulating magic strings. But with syntax highlighting, go to definition, and hover info — the VSCode makes it easy to form a mental model of the structure of your app.

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

Isograph is a framework for building data driven apps that are stable and performant out of the box, all while providing great DevEx.

This release drastically improves DevEx, and includes new primitives that allow you to build even more feature-rich, performant apps.

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

See the release blog post: isograph.dev/blog/2025/09...

Isograph v0.4.0 — the one with the VSCode extension | Isograph

The Isograph team are extremely proud to announce the release of Isograph v0.4! This release contains an absolutely monumental amount of features! The team is growing — since the last release, five ne...

isograph.dev

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · 25d

sograph 0.4 has been released!! Importantly, this includes the official release of the VSCode extension! It includes new primitives! And it includes so much more!

Let's talk about the VSCode extension and client pointers, and save the rest for another thread 😎

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Reposted by Robert Balicki

GraphQL @graphql.org · Sep 10

#GraphQLConf murder mystery - who shot
@statisticsftw.bsky.social?!!
(photo credit: @tazsingh.com)

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · Aug 27

What are your Gluttony Goals

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Reposted by Robert Balicki

Adam Chalmers @adamchalmers.com · Aug 27

as they say, "if you improve performance by 20%, you did something smart. If you improve performance by 20x, you stopped doing something stupid."

Criterion benchmark showing a 1800% improvement in throughput

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Robert Balicki @statisticsftw.bsky.social · Jul 29

And yes, that hook was called conditionally. Basically, that would have to be done across two components, but there's a plan to improve the DevEx (basically @required support)

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