Just launched a first draft of our website with a little info about what we're cooking: https://bonfire.cafe
TL;DR: Bonfire will be:
1. a pre-configured device
2. a fediverse identity hosted service (which syncs between the fediverse and the device whenever it comes online)
3. apps (web apps but they run on the device instead of the cloud)
We'd of course welcome others wanting to implement the sync protocol that Bonfire will use (for the apps to talk to the AP server) in other languages to enable non-Elixir apps to participate in the ecosystem, but the Bonfire team only has the bandwidth and interest to focus on and support Elixir apps (along with some Rust components).
TL;DR: Try out Elixir, we think you'll like it! For example Phoenix LiveView enables building reactive apps without all the JavaScript ;)
@jvalleroy
Also note that this would mean missing out on all the libraries (be they a generic AP implementation, circles functionality, a search index, a collection of UI components, etc, etc) that we are developing to make it easy to build something bespoke without having to rewrite all the common functionality from scratch...