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Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

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Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#131

Post by archy_ »

d2mw wrote: post #27
mroche wrote: post #18

> If you build your application in Dark’s language inside of Dark’s editor, the reward is you can deploy it automatically on Dark’s infrastructure on Google Cloud Platform without worrying about all of the typical underlying deployment tasks. > ... Ellen Chisa, CEO and co-founder at the company, admits that the Dark approach requires learning to use her company’s toolset, but she says the trade-off is worth it becaus…

> offset the deploying mechanism and control (probably to varying degrees) to a third party that’s dependent on another third party This sounds exactly like working inside any big company, and all that pre-canned infrastructure is a huge benefit to any project It will be interesting to see what they've built in the cold light of day, and whether it delivers. I'm apparently not nearly as pessimistic as others on this…

Pre-canned infrastructure is generally fine, this requires you use their programming language and their text editor. The article and website make no mention of if your code is stored in version control you can mirror, or if there are any plans to open source it (it appears to be a complete black box, which is fitting for a product called Dark). You also rely on their infrastructure, so it truly is putting all your eggs in the basket of a single startup.

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#133

Post by seanhunter »

abdelhai wrote: post #122
dorian-graph wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> .. it abstracts away ... Isn't that what people in this thread are speaking against? It may abstract something away, but with the downsides of learning this new (probably leaky) abstraction, increased third-party reliance, more magic, etc.

We believe people tend to opt for the less complex solution over time. This evolution happens slowly and may upset many people but in the end, simplicity wins. Caching, SQL, Load Balancers didn't exist a few decades ago and now we spend months of our limited time trying to tame the cloud machine. Don't get me wrong, I'm a lover of (complex) systems, but not everybody needs them/can maintain them. Edit: couple => few

"Multi-level storage system having a buffer store with variable mapping modes" (1972) mentions caching. The term doesn't require explanation in the paper so was obviously in reasonably wide use already https://patents.google.com/patent/US3820078A/en

"Sequel: A structured English Query language" (1975) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=811515

"Vertical Migration for Performance Enhancement in Layered Hardware/Firmware/Software Systems" (1978) describes how to do live/live migrations behind load balancers. https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/co/1978/05/01646957/1...

All of these technologies is way older than you think.

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#134

Post by Nullabillity »

maximilianroos wrote: post #59

The tone here is _extremely_ cynical. Before you jump from thinking a specific feature is wrong, to asserting the whole project is a waste of time: please take a moment to consider where your broad assertion might be wrong. In the words of Sam Altman: "it's easy/fun to say every new startup you hear about is bad. you will usually be right. you will never be successful." https://twitter.com/sama/status/571733273996488…

Philip Morris is successful, that doesn't mean that their product is a positive on the world.

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#135

Post by datpuz »

This would have appealed to me before building a rather large side project with Google Cloud's proprietary Firestore database. There are loads of drawbacks that slowly become apparent the more I build and the deeper I dig myself into that hole. I loved how quickly I was able to get something up and running, and was super excited about it at first. But as I've had to add more and more features and turn it into a real project, being limited to only the tools provided by the vendor has become a real drag. Migration, testing, debugging, is all so much more of a pain. Can't even run my application locally without an internet connection. On top of all of that, there may be pricing hikes, or the service could go away all together.

With that experience, it would be hard for me to be convinced that something like Dark would be worth the risk. With things like this, you don't always realize the drawbacks until it's too late. Now, for my side project, I'm only really stuck with the database - locking myself into a programming language and even a text editor sounds like a nightmare.

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#136

Post by jillesvangurp »

bump64 wrote: post #102

For the last 10 years I've been working mostly on CI and CD automation for a few projects that as part of their offering tried to automate the deployment for their clients. In general when you try to simplify a process you increase the level of abstraction which leads to additional complexity in terms of customization and integration with third party systems and tools. Then you decide that it is a good idea to offer…

Agreed. You have to develop such that your product survives whatever is fashionable today in any case. As Joel Spolsky pointed out at some point, your architecture is not the framework you picked.

On the other hand, CD/CI needs to be an enabler and in small startup there is only so much time you can dedicate to it. Any change on this front tends to be disruptive and suck up non trivial amounts of development time. So keep it simple. Follow the principle of the least amount of surprise (for new team members if you hire them). And keep it reasonable. You are going to cut corners here one way or another. Don't obsess about that.

The Dark people seems to want you to buy into their entire stack (editor, language, saas platform, etc.). That sounds like a lot of risky unproven technology to me. Maybe use something more mainstream like heroku?

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#137

Post by theamk »

maximilianroos wrote: post #59

The tone here is _extremely_ cynical. Before you jump from thinking a specific feature is wrong, to asserting the whole project is a waste of time: please take a moment to consider where your broad assertion might be wrong. In the words of Sam Altman: "it's easy/fun to say every new startup you hear about is bad. you will usually be right. you will never be successful." https://twitter.com/sama/status/571733273996488…

We (using general "we" here) spent so much time convincing developer that version control is good, reviewable changes are good, automated CI is good, and editing directly on the servers is bad. This was not because of some abstract ideas, but because of practical lessons about how to maintain long-lived applications.

And now there is a startup which says "let's edit directly on the servers, automated CI is not needed -- the code will always be correct, and we will add version control in the future.. maybe..."

How do you think people will react to this?

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#138

Post by abdelhai »

seanhunter wrote: post #133
abdelhai wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We believe people tend to opt for the less complex solution over time. This evolution happens slowly and may upset many people but in the end, simplicity wins. Caching, SQL, Load Balancers didn't exist a few decades ago and now we spend months of our limited time trying to tame the cloud machine. Don't get me wrong, I'm a lover of (complex) systems, but not everybody needs them/can maintain them. Edit: couple => few

"Multi-level storage system having a buffer store with variable mapping modes" (1972) mentions caching. The term doesn't require explanation in the paper so was obviously in reasonably wide use already https://patents.google.com/patent/US3820078A/en "Sequel: A structured English Query language" (1975) https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=811515 "Vertical Migration for Performance Enhancement in Layered Hardware/Firmwar…

Thank you for the very useful links.

Re: Dark emerges with ‘deployless’ software model

#140

Post by pbiggar »

d2mw wrote: post #34
notjesse wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. It only sounds maybe 1 step removed from where aws lambda’s are now. You fiddle with the code in the lambda IDE, and submit for deployment. Is this really that much different?

Lambda is the antithesis of frictionless development, most of your life is invested in figuring out the Lambda way to do things, just like App Engine before it "I just need to run this function every 10 minutes" .. (3 blog posts later) .. (1 lunch break later) .. (5 Git commits across 3 repos containing a mix of CloudFormation, CloudWatch and Terraform, 3 new IAM policies and 12 S3 buckets with completely unmemorable…

Dark founder here. Yes, completely agree with this. To a certain extent, Dark is aimed at being what lambda/serverless should have been.

The thing that frustrates me about Lambda (and really all of AWS) is that we're just dealing with a bit of code and bit of data. Even in 1999 when I had just started coding I could write something that runs every 10 minutes. But now it's super challenging. Why is it so hard to take a request, munge it, send it somewhere, and then respond to it. That should be trivial! (and in Dark, it is)

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