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The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

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Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#561

Post by gimboland »

collyw wrote: post #489
numlock86 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the argument why you should go serverless. If all you do is keep a vanilla Linux distro running in a VM with occasional updates and some initial config-magic (webserver, certs, ip tables, ssh etc.) why even bother? The serverless isn't going to be any different, other than it just runs. No need to make a cron for updates, no iptables, no certs or webserver-stuff ... just put your app on it and let it g…

Because you can reproduce that environment locally. Often useful for fixing bugs.

Also useful for doing the development in the first place!

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#562

Post by ForHackernews »

randomsearch wrote: post #406

This advantage: “Serverless models don’t require users to maintain their own operating systems, or even to build applications that are compatible with particular OSs. Instead, developers can produce generic code, and then upload it to the serverless framework, and watch it run.” ... is utterly compelling and is why serverless will not just win, but leave renting a server a tiny niche market that few developers will h…

> The future of software development is going to be defined by cloud providers

That's probably true of web development, but "software development" writ large is much more than just cloud providers and webapps. "Software" encompasses everything from embedded microcontrollers to big iron mainframes that drive (yes, even today, even in 2030) much of the world's energy, transportation, financial and governmental infrastructure.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#563

Post by thinkharderdev »

justinram11 wrote: post #220

As someone on a two-man-team who runs a lot of little "utility" functions in AWS Lambda with the Serverless Framework[1] to support our DevOps / Build processes, it's been one of the most productive tools in my toolkit (after the initial learning curve, of course). It allows me to stand up a practically maintenance-free endpoint in a matter of hours (usually to glue separate services together): * Want to run a quick…

Right, this is where Lambda really does shine. The problem is when it becomes "everything we build has to be serverless"

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#564

Post by xorcist »

numlock86 wrote: post #464
xorcist wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maintaining your own server is completely nuts I've in this area professionally for some time now, and I've never "maintained" servers in any reasonable sense. There are kernel people who maintain the kernel and there are Debian devs who maintain the operating system. The server may be mine (but more often that not, it isn't) but only in very specific circumstances do I ever concern myself with maintaining any part…

That's exactly the argument why you should go serverless. If all you do is keep a vanilla Linux distro running in a VM with occasional updates and some initial config-magic (webserver, certs, ip tables, ssh etc.) why even bother? The serverless isn't going to be any different, other than it just runs. No need to make a cron for updates, no iptables, no certs or webserver-stuff ... just put your app on it and let it g…

The above comment was intended to answer exactly that: because it is much less maintenance in the long run.

Had you deployed an application to a proprietary cloud platform ten years ago, a handful of those services would have had their APIs changed or even been sunset by now.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#565

Post by ForHackernews »

xorcist wrote: post #560
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot easier to change providers, if your service is an (eg.) docker image(s), than to move something relying on amazons api.

It's even easier if your application is just (an equivalent of) a binary, or a tarball.

Unless it relies on any system libraries, in which case you're in dependency hell when you upgrade or change the OS.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#566

Post by slightwinder »

nicbou wrote: post #487
randomsearch wrote: post #406

This advantage: “Serverless models don’t require users to maintain their own operating systems, or even to build applications that are compatible with particular OSs. Instead, developers can produce generic code, and then upload it to the serverless framework, and watch it run.” ... is utterly compelling and is why serverless will not just win, but leave renting a server a tiny niche market that few developers will h…

I don't do any server admin. My code runs in docker on pretty much any server I can get my hands on. Some of my code runs on a ThinkPad stashed behind my desk, on DigitalOcean, on my Macbook. I could deploy to a Raspberry Pi and it would run just the same. It takes 10 minutes to deploy an exact copy to a new environment. None of that requires OS maintenance. My house plants require far more maintenance than my softwa…

> None of that requires OS maintenance. My house plants require far more maintenance than my software. I sometimes forget where some things run because I haven't touched them in years.

Then how do you know they are still secure and even working?

Yes, deploying servers is very easy, maintaining and securing them is the hard part. Sure, you can automate the updates and it will work with a good OS-Distribution for some years. But no system is perfect, exploits are everywhere, even in your own configuration. And then it becomes tricky to protect your data.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#567

Post by bernawil »

pantelisk wrote: post #414
nicky0 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of genuine interest... is there a modern solution to this problem with PHP/MySQL? (I'm still doing the "upload to server to test" thing.... I've tried MAMP and Vagrant/VirtualBox for local dev but both of them seem horribly complex compared to what we can do with local dev with node.js/mongo and so on.)

"docker-compose up" and your OS, codebase, dependecies and data is up and running locally in the exposed local port of your preference. You can even split parts in different layers to mimic a services/cross-region logic. Of course this won't fix the fact that you have a lambda behind api gateway that does some heic->jpg conversion and can't be hit outside the DMZ, or some esoteric SQS queue that you can't mimmic loca…

and there's localstack for those cases.

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#568

Post by Simon321 »

jononor wrote: post #541
gorbypark wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Google Cloud Run to run my serverless code for exactly this reason. GCR is literally just a container that runs on demand (with scaling to 0). Literally the only GCR specific part is making sure the service listens on the PORT env. If I was so inclined, I could deploy the exact same container on any number of services, host it myself and/or run it on my laptop for development purposes. There's also Kubernetes K…

How is the spin-up time for such a container?

a few seconds apparently: https://thenewstack.io/comparison-aws-fargate-vs-google-clou...

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#569

Post by randomsearch »

ForHackernews wrote: post #562
randomsearch wrote: post #406

This advantage: “Serverless models don’t require users to maintain their own operating systems, or even to build applications that are compatible with particular OSs. Instead, developers can produce generic code, and then upload it to the serverless framework, and watch it run.” ... is utterly compelling and is why serverless will not just win, but leave renting a server a tiny niche market that few developers will h…

> The future of software development is going to be defined by cloud providers That's probably true of web development, but "software development" writ large is much more than just cloud providers and webapps. "Software" encompasses everything from embedded microcontrollers to big iron mainframes that drive (yes, even today, even in 2030) much of the world's energy, transportation, financial and governmental infrastr…

I think you've made a fair point, which I did have in mind but didn't write down - that there is a dichotomy between embedded and cloud systems, and the definition of software development will be to a lesser extent defined by the embedded side. Apple, for example, will have clout.

But long-term I think the cloud providers will assimilate so much power that the embedded side will follow its diktats.

Big iron mainframes have longevity, but will absolutely die out close to complete extinction - I've worked on those systems, I understand their strengths and the legacy issues, and there's no way that cloud isn't going to gobble up that market, it's just going to take a long time (as you say, beyond 2030).

Re: The Serverless Revolution Has Stalled

#570

Post by randomsearch »

sippingjippers wrote: post #471
randomsearch wrote: post #406

This advantage: “Serverless models don’t require users to maintain their own operating systems, or even to build applications that are compatible with particular OSs. Instead, developers can produce generic code, and then upload it to the serverless framework, and watch it run.” ... is utterly compelling and is why serverless will not just win, but leave renting a server a tiny niche market that few developers will h…

It's not clear to me how much experience with serverless architectures the author of the parent comment has, but speaking as someone with plenty, the operational costs of serverless are at least equal to managing stateful infrastructure, with much less control when things go wrong. Lambda was a major step up in long term predictability compared to for example App Engine, where there have been plenty of instances of o…

I don't think you're wrong, I just think you're not looking far enough ahead.

What we have now is very primitive compared to how app development might work in the future; serverless is laying the foundation for a completely different way of thinking about software development.

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