Hornbeam: Running Python Apps on the BEAM

News includes Hackney v3.1.0 dropping ~1.3 million lines of C code in favor of a pure Erlang QUIC implementation for HTTP/3 support, Benoît Chesneau's Hornbeam 1.0.0 bringing Erlang-powered hosting to Python web apps with performance that puts Gunicorn to shame, the Easel library offering a Canvas 2D drawing API for Elixir that works with Phoenix LiveView and native WX windows, Hologram v0.7.0 hitting a major milestone with client-side Erlang runtime coverage jumping from 34% to 96%, and more!

Show Notes online - http://podcast.thinkingelixir.com/293

Elixir Community News

• https://paraxial.io/ – Paraxial.io is sponsoring today's show! Sign up for a free trial of Paraxial.io today and mention Thinking Elixir when you schedule a demo for a special offer.
• https://x.com/benoitc/status/2023675416465023212 – Benoît Chesneau announces Hackney v3.1.0, a simple HTTP client for Erlang, now with HTTP/3 support via pure Erlang — no C compiler, CMake, or Go required.
• https://github.com/benoitc/hackney/releases/tag/3.1.0 – Hackney v3.1.0 release notes. Removes ~1.3M lines of C code (lsquic, BoringSSL, NIF) and replaces them with a pure Erlang QUIC implementation.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QUIC – Background on QUIC, the general-purpose transport layer protocol underlying HTTP/3 support in Hackney v3.1.0.
• https://x.com/benoitc/status/2023711566370402574 – Benoît Chesneau announces Hornbeam 1.0.0, an Erlang-powered WSGI/ASGI server for Python apps — 9x faster than Gunicorn, 10x lower latency.
• https://github.com/benoitc/hornbeam – Hornbeam GitHub repository. Run Flask, FastAPI, and Django on the BEAM with Erlang's concurrency, resilience, and distribution.
• https://hornbeam.dev/ – Hornbeam landing site — "When Python Meets Erlang." Highlights AI readiness, distributed clustering, supervisors, and no GIL concerns.
• https://x.com/benoitc/status/2024066551092031773 – Follow-up post announcing Hornbeam v1.3.0, achieving 68k req/s — 2x faster than Uvicorn/Gunicorn — with new NIF modules for direct C-level marshalling.
• https://github.com/ivarvong/pyex – PyEx — run LLM-generated Python inside your Elixir app with no containers, no ports, and no process isolation. Related project showing BEAM/Python integration.
• https://bsky.app/profile/peregrine.bsky.social/post/3mehfa2urpc2w – Jason Stiebs announces Easel v0.2.0, a Canvas 2D API for Elixir enabling drawing to Phoenix LiveView, native WX windows, or custom backends.
• https://github.com/jeregrine/Easel – Easel GitHub repository. Supports layers, animations, event handling, templating, and both LiveView and Wx rendering backends.
• https://easel-demo.fly.dev/ – Live demo of Easel running on Fly.io — all computations done in Elixir, sent over WebSocket to a canvas.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids – Background on Boids, the artificial life program simulating flocking behaviour that inspired Easel's visual simulation capabilities.
• https://x.com/Bart_Blast/status/2021741047903105527 – Hologram v0.7.0 announced — 49 contributors ported 150 Erlang functions to JS, pushing client-side Erlang runtime coverage from 34% to 96%.
• https://hologram.page/blog/porting-initiative-delivers-hologram-v0-7-0 – Hologram v0.7.0 blog post detailing the porting initiative. Overall Elixir standard library readiness grew from 74% to 87%, moving closer to full-stack pure Elixir development.
• Tidewave now supports OpenCode, and is deprecating "Bring your own key" support in favor of Codex, Claude Code, or OpenCode for richer agent features like MCPs, skills, planning, and compaction.

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Sponsored By:

• Paraxial.io: Paraxial.io is sponsoring today's show! Sign up for a free trial of Paraxial.io today and mention Thinking Elixir when you schedule a demo for a special offer.