Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your github link is 404
I realized I hadn't yet made the repo public. It is now :)
Check for keys!!! :-)
Ask HN: What are the alternatives to Amazon Lambda?
31–40 of 78 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are the alternatives to Amazon Lambda?
#32Re: Ask HN: What are the alternatives to Amazon Lambda?
#33In a way, Amazon Lambda is just "upload a PHP script to my $3 shared webhost", except: - JavaScript/Java/Python instead of PHP - Can handle gigantic bucketloads of requests per second, transparently If you don't expect to scale super high, and if the actual language isn't sacred to you, then you can get the exact same ease of deployment and a comparably large ecosystem of open source on your favorite el cheapo webhos…
This is where PHP can really shine.
I mean, you simply upload a script to a web server and have a new API endpoint...
Re: Ask HN: What are the alternatives to Amazon Lambda?
#34Iron Workers: http://www.iron.io/worker/ Most new breed Docker hosts like http://tutum.co can give you a quick DIY version. But in general they (Amazon) are (currently) the best of breed and I have only positive things to say having used the JS and Java versions.
We're using IronWorker and Lambda for a current project. Our (Go) code can run on either and we've designed the app to easily swap out the backend in case of service failure. Pros of IronWorker: More language support, better logging, easier to debug, scheduled tasks via API (this is the main thing stopping us going all in on Lambda). Cons: Slower start up time (~2-3s on average compared to milliseconds with Lambda),…
You may be interested to know that Lambda now supports scheduling: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/aws-lambda-update-python-vp...
Edit: Oh, are you saying that you want to send an API call to schedule something? They say in the post that API support is coming, but I don't know if you could schedule a one-off run that way.
Re: Ask HN: What are the alternatives to Amazon Lambda?
#35One thing that strikes me as having really promising possibilities for doing something Lambda-esque is systemd socket activation [1]. You can essentially have no running services, and systemd will hold open a socket (port/unix/etc) and then it will spin up a given service if a request is made on that socket. As long as you build your "service" to handle a single request and shut down (maybe have an external db-access…
Re: Ask HN: What are the alternatives to Amazon Lambda?
#36http://hook.io/ lets you link a gist script to a webhook, very similar. Open source & free.
Oh man, this is exactly what I've been looking for for a long time. What a brilliantly simple implementation!
FYI: it looks like they have a really generous referral program[1], so post your referral link (shameless example: https://hook.io/christiangenco?s) and I'll tweet the developer to see if you can get retroactive credit.
Re: Ask HN: What are the alternatives to Amazon Lambda?
#37Isn't most of the draw of Amazon Lambda that you can hook everything else into a simple api hosting service? I doubt there are any direct competitors, at least at that scale. Here is a discussion: https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-alternatives-to-Amazon-L...
+1 one of the draws for Lambda is that it has easy integration with other AWS tools (Kinesis, DynamoDB, SNS, even CloudFormation) and is really low-cost since you only pay for execution time.
And Amazon API Gateway, potentially the request routing layer for a heterogenous set of Lamdba-backed endpoints. Seems like that may have been particularly a service jenkstom was referring to. https://aws.amazon.com/api-gateway/
Re: Ask HN: What are the alternatives to Amazon Lambda?
#38https://webtask.io/
Why the don't use Lambda: https://medium.com/aws-activate-startup-blog/sandboxing-code...
... hile we were at it, AWS announced AWS Lambda, which looked like a potential remedy to our challenge. Upon further investigation, however, it became clear AWS Lambda is centered on an asynchronous programming model that did not quite meet our needs. The custom logic we run in Auth0 is an RPC logic: it accepts inputs and must return outputs at low latency. Given the asynchronous model of AWS Lambda, implementing such logic would require polling for the results of the computation, which would adversely affect latency...
Re: Ask HN: What are the alternatives to Amazon Lambda?
#39Newbie question: what does "Amazon Lambda" have to do with functional programming? (Because the name suggests there is a connection).
There are several connections between Lambda and functional programming.
1. The snippets of code you run in Lambda are called "cloud functions".
2. Lambda applications are generally event driven and stateless, which is a very functional idiom.
As other folks mentioned, however, you can use Lambda with non functional languages (like Java). So even though a Lambda application is inherently functional (small stateless functions communicating via events), you don't have to write in a functional style if you don't want to.
Re: Ask HN: What are the alternatives to Amazon Lambda?
#40One cool use that we are using Lambda for is to destroy EBS snapshots past a certain date. We tag snapshots with a 'retention_days' tag and then a Lambda process kicks off daily and deletes the old snapshots. The great thing about this is we can lock down the DeleteSnapshot api call so that none of our instances have access to that call anymore.