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Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

#81

Post by Jtsummers »

caleblloyd wrote: post #49
mabbo wrote: post #21

Some people don't like the word much, but "serverless" is going to become a bigger deal. You'll write your code, complex or simple; you'll hand it off to some cloud system; you'll write a bit of configuration; you're done. Likely the configuration part will become less and less required. You won't think about hardware, scaling, load balancing, etc, it will just happen for you. The data store being used will be abstra…

"Serverless" such as AWS lambda removes the ability to take advantage of so many Computer Science principles that are integral to writing a fast backend. From one request to the next there is no CPU cache optimization, in-memory caching, and no IPC to other useful programs. Serverless has it's niche for some tasks such as responding to events, but to do any heavy lifting I'd take a handful of beefy VMs over unlimited…

I only dabble in server stuffs, but I have to ask:

Why is that a problem? You can design a system and implement it with AWS Lambda (or similar) and a few other things like their (or another) database, message queue, and data storage. Then, when you find that you've got processes that are bottlenecked by this, move them into dedicated servers or containers with faster routines. Just like we already do when pairing (possibly) slower but higher-level languages with C libraries.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

#82

Post by sontek »

I don't believe the backend development we know today is obsolete or will be having many changes in the upcoming years. In every project I've worked on the front-end has always been the slower/buggier part of the stack because front-end is so complex with device/browser compatibility and having to respond.

What I do believe is that we are seeing a game changing revolution in backend development with RethinkDB ( http://rethinkdb.com/ ). It is an extremely fast distributed database with the ability to get a real-time feed of data as it changes for a query.

I've done two projects with RethinkDB and I can't imagine going back to operating postgresl/mysql/mongo because of the joy it is to scale out RethinkDB and to use it as an application developer.

They've also created a new service that abstract it away even more and allows front-end developers to be extremely productive in their prototypes: http://horizon.io/ and although its not for me I see a lot of value in it for people like you who want the backend to get of their way.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

#83

Post by collyw »

prplhaz4 wrote: post #52
grosbisou wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cause it's just adding a column This kind of mentality is why most applications are shit and broken. And why most hires are worthless. And everyone is not working on a cookie cutter over-bloated rails website. Sorry but this kind of remark simplifying our job always pisses me off.

"can't we just" is top of the list as a trigger for my bullshit detector. In a system of any complexity, changing your data model is an activity that requires due diligence to mitigate any downstream risk.

Me too. When my previous team leader said that, I knew he hadn't bothered to think it through.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

#84

Post by southpolesteve »

scrollaway wrote: post #41
mabbo wrote: post #21

Some people don't like the word much, but "serverless" is going to become a bigger deal. You'll write your code, complex or simple; you'll hand it off to some cloud system; you'll write a bit of configuration; you're done. Likely the configuration part will become less and less required. You won't think about hardware, scaling, load balancing, etc, it will just happen for you. The data store being used will be abstra…

This model isn't "serverless", it's PAAS. It's not much of a future. Heroku is useful for prototyping, not scale. (Edit: Doesn't mean it can't be more popular though - the web is full of prototypes) "Serverless" as in AWS Lambda has very specific use cases. The people who are serving websites on Lambda or something are not only doing it wrong, they are wasting money while locking themselves in to an architecture that…

I'm not sure why this myth persists. We've found Lambda + API Gateway to be an awesome solution for serving front end applications with server side rendering.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

#85

Post by tachion »

collyw wrote: post #79
tachion wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the fact that developers are expensive has in common with infrastructure/ops? You mean that developers shouldn't be working on it? I couldn't agree more, just like I wouldn't like my dentist being my heart surgeon! Developers should write the code, but they should not be doing infrastructure nor operations, and they should not enforce some 'serverless' utopia on projects/situations where pure infrastructure…

Why shouldn't we? I can do all of that. I can write better code than the the writers of the last two applications I have inherited (admittedly my sysdamin skills are probably less than a full time sysadmin, but good enough). I guess following your analogy. If you only had a dentist and a salesperson available to do your heart surgery, who would you choose?

Well, mostly because you don't have the years of experience in doing it, pretty much that. Because most of devs live only on their laptops ('works for me' syndrome), without thinking about networking, hardware underlying, OS tuning, security and other things. That's generalization of course, and I am glad you can do it all, I'd wish to have chance working with people like you more, but the reality is that you're an unicorn. Reversing your argument, why can't I do your job? I mean, I've programming skills probably worse than full time developer, but I've did my share or development and I think they're good enough ;) Why 'good enough' should be acceptable when its infrastructure and operations, but not acceptable when its development?

I'd go and look for actual surgeon. Or bite the bullet and try to live my life as it goes, without risking complete failure of both these guys messing with my heart. ;)

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

#86

Post by scrollaway »

paulftw wrote: post #53
scrollaway wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This model isn't "serverless", it's PAAS. It's not much of a future. Heroku is useful for prototyping, not scale. (Edit: Doesn't mean it can't be more popular though - the web is full of prototypes) "Serverless" as in AWS Lambda has very specific use cases. The people who are serving websites on Lambda or something are not only doing it wrong, they are wasting money while locking themselves in to an architecture that…

People host their blogs on AWS lambda for less than dollar per month [1] compared to "standard" $5 or so for VPS. How's that a waste of money? Docker and containers are also a paradigm change, but the world seem to have adopted it just fine. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11644042

That's not website hosting, it's comment processing. Lambda is doing input processing, not serving a site. It's clever, although if I just wanted comments I'd just use disqus and spare myself the trouble.

S3 is hosting the site. S3 is awesome for static site hosting, in fact. I also use it.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

#87

Post by caseymarquis »

sontek wrote: post #64
caseymarquis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like your framework sucks. With an orm and some sort of json serialization that's literally just: Put bagel in toaster. Update the db model. Add a migration. Update the viewmodel db model translation in relevant requests. Get bagel and butter it. Commit. Test the migration on a staging db if feeling paranoid, cause it's just adding a column. Push to master. Update production. Take last bite of bagel. If you ar…

This is definitely a common use case and very valid for smaller applications. If I were you though I would avoid applying your experience on smaller scale applications as a way to say that everyone who can't do that are using bad frameworks. Once your application reaches a certain scale there is a huge chance that generated migration could lock a table for minutes to hours which isn't acceptable. We allow developers…

I think you're correct. I was out of line by being too general.

For our large scale applications we back up the database and have required down time from our customers while doing a major migration.

Everything isn't always simple. But adding a check box in 90% of cases usually is.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

#88

Post by mrweasel »

mabbo wrote: post #21

Some people don't like the word much, but "serverless" is going to become a bigger deal. You'll write your code, complex or simple; you'll hand it off to some cloud system; you'll write a bit of configuration; you're done. Likely the configuration part will become less and less required. You won't think about hardware, scaling, load balancing, etc, it will just happen for you. The data store being used will be abstra…

Aren't you mixing infrastructure and backend-development?

Hardware scaling and load balancing is infrastructure. Abstracting the data for the client, that's backend development, that's where your business logic lives.

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

#89

Post by shadowmint »

jbb555 wrote: post #5

WebAssembly will not revolutionize anything. It's like java where people claim it's as fast as native code, and yet every single program runs like a dog and takes 100 times the resources. Only worse because it runs in a browser.

:)

You're wrong.

(See, I can just drop off one line unjustified comments too, but I wont~)

WPF native applications are failing against electron applications; slack, atom, vscode. If you think that because it runs in a browser it'll be slow, try writing a native windows 10 application sometime. You'll be both astonished and disappointed by how terribly slow the 'GPU accelerated' application is.

All web assembly does is cement this desktop dominance from 'native' applications and allow people to start pushing realistically into the mobile space with react native, etc.

You don't think it'll revolutionize anything? Haaaa~

Re: Ask HN: What is the future of back-end development?

#90

Post by T-A »

emilsedgh wrote: post #17

I don't think WebAssembly is going to revolutionize front end development. What you can do with WebAssembly regarding front-end development is running your Qt/GTK+ type of programs on web. But noone is interested in that. As a matter of fact, current trend seems to be ditching that sort of program on desktops and using HTML/JS/CSS stack for desktops as well (atom, slack, etc) because its much easier to create a top-n…

> because its much easier to create a top-notch UX using HTML stack

No, because it's what the hordes of inexpensive web developers know how to use.

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