Making graph-based user interfaces that look like something straight out of Blender in Rust is no easy feat. I've been working on developing one for my machine learning project over the past few days, and let me tell you, it's been a challenge. The tricky part isn't actually drawing and creating the graph. No, the real challenge lies in executing the code that the graph represents.

What is a protobuf?

It's essentially a method to explain a protocol in a way that's easily understood by humans. What's particularly fascinating is that the "protobuf compiler" can subsequently generate code for your preferred programming language! This feature makes it completely language-agnostic, which is one of the reasons it's so remarkable.

So what is nostr?

It stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays" and is a federation protocol. Its wire protocol is dead simple to understand and straightforward compared to ActivityPub. The protocol is also separated into NIPs (Nostr Implementation Possibilities), which are essentially add-ons that a server can broadcast if they support or not. From a programming perspective, this makes it easy to gradually implement parts of the protocol. For example, I'm currently working on a Rust-based Nostr server that only implements NIP-01 for now. Later on, I can easily add support for another NIP without much effort.