Awesome projects you should put on your radar in 2023
Tags: cloud, webassembly, serverless, programming
Published: 2023-04-03 10:28:30

There are a bunch of cool and promising projects you may not have on your radar yet.

Here is a small list of projects I come around the last weeks and month:

## Cloud

### TriggerMesh

A few weeks ago, I've seen TriggerMesh the first time.
And well, what should I say? Love it!
They describe it as:
> Open-source AWS EventBridge alternative

Right now, there is no software SDK available to directly connect your software.
I hope and I think this will change soon.
**But**, you are already able to connect a bunch of software solutions to your existing solution.
This will avoid building of custom software solutions as workarounds and kind of duct tape.

**[www.triggermesh.com](https://www.triggermesh.com)**

### Temporal

Temporal is a really promising project, which also has recently got a $75M push from investors.
From the official website:
> Temporal is a scalable and reliable runtime for Reentrant Processes called Temporal Workflow Executions.

The way how you can build and connect business logic and the features it provides, are solving actual issues in complex scenarios.
I was able to try it out in my freelancer project.
There is no big learning curve, and you will quickly see how many possibilities and features are available out of the box.

**[Temporal](https://temporal.io)**

### Dapr

> The Distributed Application Runtime (Dapr) provides APIs that simplify microservice connectivity. Whether your communication pattern is service to service invocation or pub/sub messaging, Dapr helps you write resilient and secured microservices.

Dapr will help developers and DevOps to handle microservices and event driven architectures. It also is very helpful to migrate existing software into a more scalable structure.

**[dapr.io](https://dapr.io)**

### OpenFaaS

Serverless and FaaS are buzzwords everybody is talking about.
When it comes to practice, you should check out OpenFaaS.

> OpenFaaS® makes it simple to deploy both functions and existing code to Kubernetes

**[openfaas.com](https://openfaas.com)**

## WebAssembly

While WebAssembly was original more focusing on browsers, it becomes more and more attention in the backend.
To be able to run WebAssembly in the backend, you will need some kind of runtime.
Here are some interesting projects.

### WasmEdge

[Second State](https://www.secondstate.io) has some interesting projects. One of it, is the Wasm runtime.
Taken from the GitHub readme file: 
> WasmEdge is a lightweight, high-performance, and extensible WebAssembly runtime.

**[wasmedge.org](https://wasmedge.org)**

### Wasmer

Wasmer is one of the mature projects in this area.
Taken from the official documentation: 
> Wasmer is an open-source runtime for executing WebAssembly on the Server.

**[wasmer.io](https://wasmer.io)**

### Wasmtime
Wasmtime is another mature project.
> A fast and secure runtime for WebAssembly

**[wasmtime.dev](https://wasmtime.dev)**

For me, it looks like Wasmer and Wasmtime are competitors in a good way. Both projects are pushing things forward for the whole WebAssembly universe.

### Lunatic

Taken from the website: 
> Lunatic is an Erlang-inspired runtime for WebAssembly

**[lunatic.solutions](https://lunatic.solutions)**

### WasmCloud

Taken from the website: 
> wasmCloud provides a WebAssembly application runtime so you can run your applications everywhere - servers, clients, hosts, IOS, web browsers, IOT or where ever WebAssembly executes.

**[wasmcloud.com](https://wasmcloud.com)**

### WebAssembly languages

There are two cool language projects, which will help developers to build a Wasm program. Especially, if you are not familiar with Rust or C/C++, you should check out:

**[AssemblyScript](https://www.assemblyscript.org)** and **[Grain](https://grain-lang.org)**

## Tools and more...

### Bun

As I'm a typescript developer, I really love this! And I think you will love it too.
Taken from their website:

> Bun is a new JavaScript runtime built for speed, with a native bundler, transpiler, test runner, and npm-compatible package manager baked-in

And **YES**, it is fast!
Especially the testing features blows my mind. It is the next level.
Compared to a regular stack with ts-node or similar, this feature saves time instantly. No additional setups or code changes required.
I'm sure it has a great future on edge and cloud.

**[bun.sh](https://bun.sh)**

### OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry becomes more and more adopted by a huge range of vendors and software solutions, when it comes to tracing and visibility.

**[opentelemetry.io](https://opentelemetry.io)**


### EventCatalog

If you have ever worked with some kind of event driven architecture, you will love this project.
The description from the website:
> EventCatalog is an Open Source project that helps you document your events, services and domains.

For me, it is worth to check it out.
The UI is nice, and it allows also non-developers to create and understand the documentation.
It would be nice, if you also support projects like this.

**[eventcatalog.dev](https://www.eventcatalog.dev)**

## Last, but not least

Some of my friends have been building an amazing product.
I like to mention and support it here:

> Veryfront is a tool that empowers developers and teams to quickly build and deploy web apps right in the browser.

**[Veryfront.com](https://veryfront.com)**

So, it would be cool if you have a look at it, tray it out, play around and maybe use it for your own next project.

And finally...

If you like and if you are interested in modern typescript backend development, you can have a look at my own open source project. It is still in some early stage, but I'm hardly working on it.

> A backend framework for keeping professional software development fast, efficient, secure and maintainable!
 Write independent small, single functions, which are connected by a message based approach, orchestrate and deploy them how you like.

**[PURISTA.dev](https://purista.dev)**

Image by [Mario Caruso](https://unsplash.com/@giggiulena?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) from [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/de/fotos/0C9VmZUqcT8?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)
  

**There are a lot more cool projects.
Let me know the projects you love and maybe you are working on!**