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Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

aws.amazon.com

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Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#71

Post by ramblerman »

kirillzubovsky wrote: post #23

In principle I really like this way of developing, and especially prototyping, but as it stands right now Google is doing a significantly better job with their tools than Amazon. Amazon got the same guts, but their presentation of these tools is horrendous. It's aimed at the highly skilled developers who would get the concepts in a blink, with the only problem that these are the same people who can spin out servers w…

> Would love to see Amazon compete, but they have a long road ahead

Amazon is absolutely dominating this space

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#72

Post by factsaresacred »

kirillzubovsky wrote: post #23

In principle I really like this way of developing, and especially prototyping, but as it stands right now Google is doing a significantly better job with their tools than Amazon. Amazon got the same guts, but their presentation of these tools is horrendous. It's aimed at the highly skilled developers who would get the concepts in a blink, with the only problem that these are the same people who can spin out servers w…

Firebase is fantastic and that's because they built their toolset and UI before being acquired by Google.

They recently Google-ified their website but it's still less of a mess than Google cloud console (which feels like navigating a helicopter's dashboard).

First impressions matter and I think Firebase nailed it. The website presents the value clearly while also allowing you to get into the weeds if you need to. They ought to put their design team in charge of the rest of Google's cloud platform.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#73

Post by collyw »

virtualized wrote: post #66
melvinram wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called serverless because, for all intents and purposes, you don't know or control: * how many real or virtual servers are running your code. * how the servers were provisioned or setup. * how to access the servers (either via SSH or programmatically), either than through predefined APIs. * what happens when the servers break. * what causes the servers to disappear. * etc. The "server" concept has been abstracte…

These were already the promises of "the Cloud" until everyone started calling their Raspberry Pis at home a "cloud". Now the same thing has got another stupid name: Serverless. I wonder what the same stuff will be called two years from now.

It was "web based" before that.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#75

Post by gluczywo »

Sephr wrote: post #41

Is anyone else slightly peeved by the popularity of this misnomer? If you are paying for servers , your app isn't serverless . Real serverless to me means decentralized p2p and offline apps. I also consider p2p-routed apps with centralized control serverless as long as they continue to function in a read-only state when the control server is down.

It's not only a misnomer but the term is not needed. We've had SOA, web services, microservices, now serverless. I'm not saying it's all hype. It's rather a steady, lasting a few decades, transition towards outsourcing by encapsulating complexity into services. For me we've just arrived to the point where web services are mature enough so they can be consumed directly from the browser.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#76

Post by melvinram »

virtualized wrote: post #66
melvinram wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called serverless because, for all intents and purposes, you don't know or control: * how many real or virtual servers are running your code. * how the servers were provisioned or setup. * how to access the servers (either via SSH or programmatically), either than through predefined APIs. * what happens when the servers break. * what causes the servers to disappear. * etc. The "server" concept has been abstracte…

These were already the promises of "the Cloud" until everyone started calling their Raspberry Pis at home a "cloud". Now the same thing has got another stupid name: Serverless. I wonder what the same stuff will be called two years from now.

Yes, services (such as AWS S3) that could be considered serverless have existed for some time now.

What has changed is that the suite of services now exist to fully enable an application to be (almost) completely serverless.

Similar to micro-services, people will overuse the word and it will seem like a fad. IMO, it's more than a fad. Once the toolchain is mature, it will become the default way of building applications.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#77

Post by developer2 »

Sephr wrote: post #41

Is anyone else slightly peeved by the popularity of this misnomer? If you are paying for servers , your app isn't serverless . Real serverless to me means decentralized p2p and offline apps. I also consider p2p-routed apps with centralized control serverless as long as they continue to function in a read-only state when the control server is down.

Amazon goes to the extent to fully explain in the very first two sentences: "Serverless computing allows you to build and run applications and services without thinking about servers. With serverless computing, your application still runs on servers, but all the server management is done by AWS."

"Serverless" had no previous meaning - it's not like Amazon bastardized an existing term. The word will ultimately be defined once people expect it to mean something specific. Personally I like Amazon's use of the term here.

A recent similar example: the word "performant". The number of stubborn people who screamed "performant isn't a word!" was ridiculous. Everyone understands the intention behind the word "performant" without needing to have it explained to them. The introduction and wide adoption of a word is exactly how new words are folded into language. Language is fluid! Language has never been static and inflexible, and pouting because we have extended the dictionary over and over again for thousands of years is frivolous.

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#78

Post by amelius »

Sephr wrote: post #41

Is anyone else slightly peeved by the popularity of this misnomer? If you are paying for servers , your app isn't serverless . Real serverless to me means decentralized p2p and offline apps. I also consider p2p-routed apps with centralized control serverless as long as they continue to function in a read-only state when the control server is down.

Agreed. When I first read the term, I thought it was about some P2P service.

Why not call it "hosted" or "virtually-hosted" instead?

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#79

Post by thinkMOAR »

Sephr wrote: post #41

Is anyone else slightly peeved by the popularity of this misnomer? If you are paying for servers , your app isn't serverless . Real serverless to me means decentralized p2p and offline apps. I also consider p2p-routed apps with centralized control serverless as long as they continue to function in a read-only state when the control server is down.

I'm agreeing with you, and their own text does too

I quote: "Serverless computing allows you to build and run applications and services without thinking about servers."

Serverless clearly is not serverless.

down voted edit: LOL

Re: Build a Serverless Web Applicaion

#80

Post by sriram_iyengar »

kagx wrote: post #70
sriram_iyengar wrote: post #30

- watchout for latencies (multi-zones apps) time of your lambda functions. - keep your lambda functions warmed up - node has better warmup time than java lambdas (not sure of python) - memory size impact of lambda functions (negligible in most cases) - manage lambda timeouts - dynamodb latencies are negligible - api gateway typically does not introduce latencies - multitenancy challenges with single store of dynamodb

> api gateway typically does not introduce latencies I haven't checked my function thoroughly yet, but I think API gateway introduce quite a bit of latency (at least in my case). My maximum invocation time is 600ms, according to AWS Lambda monitoring tool, but network request takes around 1s (checked in chrome dev tools). Also, worht noting is that my code is hosted in the us-east region and I'm based in Europe. I'm…

>> Also, worht noting is that my code is hosted in the us-east region and I'm based in Europe. I'm not sure how much latency this introduce. Very much possible, if your regions are different.
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