I will be working on this when I get cycles. Barring the issues already above, there are a lot of areas for optimizations, for instance how images are handled (i.e., they can be handled through object storage like Cloudflare R2 to decrease bandwidth/ram costs). Some is more dev-ops on how common instances are setup, others are code changes to make things more efficient.

Perhaps we should start a community or communication group for this?

It's difficult problem to solve. Lemmy's stack is a bit unconventional. The rust backend is not idiomatic and the ui is based off a template of an isomorphic not-quite-react framework. Its not impossible, but it will take a while for alot of programmers come onboard.

That being said, there's more to it than writing code. Better bug reports, reproduction, updating docs and triaging/managing the issues is possibly more important than writing PRs. Don't be discouraged!

It's on my radar and I'm sure it's on a number of other people's as well. It just takes a little onboarding time like all good projects.

Worth noting: the ui is in inferno js

So the backend is coded in Rust? I've been learning the language but haven't actually used it outside of tutorials yet. I'm experienced in C++ and know how to program so I may look into it while I'm unemployed.

Maybe that is the problem, rust, not a popular choice for web development.