Wing Cloud claims first programming language for the cloud

For a new programming language to enter the market successfully, it must fulfill a need that other languages do not, and Wing Cloud’s Winglang was born of the desire to make programming on the cloud seamless. The origins of Wing Cloud are in the open source project AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) for defining and provisioning cloud infrastructure resources. Winglang, also an open-source project, abstracts away the cloud so that programmers do not have to deal with the complexity of the tangle of infrastructure and code when programming on the cloud, including multi- and hybrid-cloud. Wing Cloud also exploits open-source AWS CDK to manage infrastructure. As a language that treats the cloud as a first-class entity Winglang is a natural cloud-native computing language and will be welcomed by developers.

Making ‘cloud’ an abstract entity in code

Wing Cloud calls its language Winglang, a cloud-oriented programming language. In traditional programming, the developer is coding for a single machine at a time, whereas in cloud programming, there is a mix of code and infrastructure concerns from the start. Elad Ben-Israel, who led the AWS CDK project, co-founded Wing Cloud with Shai Bar to meet the challenge of developing on the cloud. Cloud-native applications typically call multiple infrastructure points: API gateway, serverless functions, cloud storage, cloud database, Kubernetes, and more. This requires custom code to deal with different cloud environments. Traditional programming languages were designed in the non-cloud era or not with the cloud in mind. The cloud adds a layer of complexity which reduces the efficiency of developers.

With Winglang, the developer defines the intent using abstracted entities, and the compiler autonomously handles the complexity. The application uses abstracted endpoints, functions, object stores, document stores, services, and more. Simple instructions link the abstractions to the desired cloud services: AWS, Azure, GCP, or local host. While Winglang abstracts the cloud, it does enable developers/DevOps to configure and customize below the abstraction when needed, for?example, using the compiler plugins:?https://www.winglang.io/docs/tools/compiler-plugins.

The Winglang local environment provides an editor/console for coding, debugging, and testing, and the Wing SDK comprises an ecosystem of CDK libraries for cloud-independent and local development. A key component of CDK is jsii, which allows code in any language to interact with JavaScript classes. CDK uses TypeScript, and then jsii allows publishing to JavaScript, Python, Java, .Net/C#, and more. This enables CDK to deliver polyglot libraries from a single codebase. CDK/jsii is used by the Wing SDK to publish to different languages, so developers can start with the Wing SDK and their preferred development language before adopting Winglang.

The complexity of writing cloud-native applications such as microservices and serverless functions is simplified. For example, a single codebase can define multiple serverless functions instead of separating these out, as would be done in other languages.

Developers can build, run, debug, and test cloud applications within local environments. The compiler deals with the mechanics of setting up and configuring infrastructure, so effectively, the developer only writes high-level infrastructure as code. To enable cloud services to be treated as first-class entities, the language has a ‘cloud’ concept to which the cloud of choice can be linked. The compilation targets include:

·??Infrastructure (Terraform)

·??Runtime code bundles (JS/WASM)

·??Docker/container images

·??Security policies

·??Networking policies

·??Observability configuration

·??CI/CD workflows

Winglang is a middleware and backend development language, and not for front-end development, but with CDK, it will integrate with code designed for the user interface. This includes integrating with WebAssembly, the other programming language that has grown for the cloud era.

As cloud native computing increases adoption, Omdia believes the need for a cloud native language will also grow, and Winglang is an excellent fit.

Wing Cloud’s roadmap

Wing Cloud was founded in 2022; the team is 16 strong and has raised $20mn to date, which will take it to 3Q 2026 at the current burn rate.

Winglang is currently in alpha testing, and beta testing is expected early next year. Wing Cloud SDK is also in alpha testing, as is the Wing Console. A preview environment is in prototype development, and the next stage will be a private beta. There is also a Wing Cloud Platform for managing multi-cloud or self-hosted applications, currently at a concept stage.

In the long-term, Wing Cloud sees a meta-cloud concept being built on top of clouds, with a managed cloud computing platform encompassing security, application observability, compliance, deployment with CI/CD and GitOps, and cloud management, governance, storage, and availability.

The business model for Wing Cloud is to offer a free development toolchain for local environments and introduce consumption-based pricing for cloud-enabled applications, as well as for the Wing Cloud Platform.