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Back to the '70s with Serverless

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Re: Back to the '70s with Serverless

#181

Post by reader_1000 »

aflag wrote: post #174
reader_1000 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one part of the application needs to be changed frequently and/or is used by other applications, then it makes sense to separate it as a microservice. However, for other parts, I think it might be better to stay as a monolith since when you have a network in your calls, things get messier. Networks are unreliable even if it is your local area network. In my career I saw some unrelated network equipment was sending…

Not sure if rate of change truly matters. In my opinion, microservices make most sense when dealing with multiple team. It's much easier to update core services when everyone depends on it through the network, rather than requiring people to redeploy their stuff. If you're a single team operation, it's not really a problem if all your stuff runs in a single process. It may even benefit you in terms of performance and…

Rate of change may matter when your monolith application takes too long to deploy (i.e a big war application with lots of initializations at start), although rolling updates may help here. It will also be easier to rollback if things go wrong.

On the other hand, I agree with your point of multiple teams. I tried to mean same thing with "used by other applications"

Re: Back to the '70s with Serverless

#182

Post by ehnto »

dragonwriter wrote: post #176
memetherapy wrote: post #145

One thing that surprised me as a latecomer to software development coming from a visual arts background is how much choice of technology and working practices are purely fashion driven. The thing about fashion is that the way if develops is largely arbitrary. Changes in fashion resemble a drunken walk through possible design space with the drunkard receiving regular shoves from "influencers" who are usually trying to…

> One thing that surprised me as a latecomer to software development coming from a visual arts background is how much choice of technology and working practices are purely fashion driven. It's not “purely fashion driven”, it's just that (1) as solutions radiate out from their point of origin understanding of the problem, how the solution addresses it, and what caveats the user should be aware of gets (on average) fog…

> a technology for which you can get people that are proficient and comfortable is better than one you can't,

Hence why PHP is still the leading language for eCommerce, where fashion gives way to tight margins and hiring talent for a decade long lived piece of software is a major concern.

When cost is the driving factor for most decisions, and ROI is a very real and measured metric, convincing someome to rewrite their money making machine to keep up with the latest in tech is a hard sell.

Re: Back to the '70s with Serverless

#183

Post by sjg007 »

memetherapy wrote: post #145

One thing that surprised me as a latecomer to software development coming from a visual arts background is how much choice of technology and working practices are purely fashion driven. The thing about fashion is that the way if develops is largely arbitrary. Changes in fashion resemble a drunken walk through possible design space with the drunkard receiving regular shoves from "influencers" who are usually trying to…

Keen observation. I enjoyed Halt and Catch Fire because of its parallels to today. A lot of previous startups had good ideas just the tech wasn’t quite right or v1 at the time.

Re: Back to the '70s with Serverless

#184

Post by mjw1007 »

memetherapy wrote: post #145

One thing that surprised me as a latecomer to software development coming from a visual arts background is how much choice of technology and working practices are purely fashion driven. The thing about fashion is that the way if develops is largely arbitrary. Changes in fashion resemble a drunken walk through possible design space with the drunkard receiving regular shoves from "influencers" who are usually trying to…

As far as technology goes, I think what we describe as "fashion" is often mostly caused by a desire for safety in numbers, and to a large extent that's rational.

If I pick the same language or framework or whatever as everyone else, there's a better chance it won't be abandoned, and when I want to integrate with some other project, someone else will already have done a great deal of the work.

Re: Back to the '70s with Serverless

#185

Post by bob1029 »

qz2 wrote: post #161
memetherapy wrote: post #145

One thing that surprised me as a latecomer to software development coming from a visual arts background is how much choice of technology and working practices are purely fashion driven. The thing about fashion is that the way if develops is largely arbitrary. Changes in fashion resemble a drunken walk through possible design space with the drunkard receiving regular shoves from "influencers" who are usually trying to…

What I find frustrating is that if you are in a high stake environment it’s increasingly fashion driven too. I am in one of those environments where we can get prosecuted, big time. I tend to opt for a conservative engineering approach with maturity and security considerations being a key part of the design process. But no, fuck that, someone went to a conference, bought everything shiny and started a death-march of…

I dont understand why business leaders cannot see this for what it is and take back some control. Investors need to start asking more probing questions about how organizations develop and deploy applications. Perhaps if the money becomes contingent, people will start to give a shit about the engineering quality.

At no point should "fun" be a line item when determining what technology to select in a high stake environment.

We are in finance and we picked the most boring technologies we could find. Most of our stuff doesn't even talk to the network stack. I can't imagine running our transactions, with their piping hot PII, through the labyrinthine monstrosity that is modern "best practices".

Re: Back to the '70s with Serverless

#186

Post by sgt101 »

kazen44 wrote: post #177
sgt101 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you are working at hyperscale yourselves already, and there are maybe 50 organisations like you out there. Maybe. Right now I don't think that there is a single telco that has the scale to break GCP, or a single manufacturing company (exempt Tesla) or a single energy company. Or bank. I agree that pharma, social media and streaming may do this. But since Netflix is on AWS I am doubtful of the last.

i think you greatly misunderstand the size of some telco's and Infrastructure providers. also, some manufacturing giants are truly enormous.. samsung for instance makes everything from smartphones to artillery installations.. same goes for hyundai, mitsubishi etc..

I did big data at one of the biggest European telcos. The only thing that kept any of it on prem was capex Vs opex (and we had sunk capex so that wasn't coming back into the budget) AT&T claimed their Hadoop installation was ten times bigger than ours, but it was still will within the parameters of any of the hyperscalers.

Re: Back to the '70s with Serverless

#187

Post by sgt101 »

vntok wrote: post #142
sgt101 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you are working at hyperscale yourselves already, and there are maybe 50 organisations like you out there. Maybe. Right now I don't think that there is a single telco that has the scale to break GCP, or a single manufacturing company (exempt Tesla) or a single energy company. Or bank. I agree that pharma, social media and streaming may do this. But since Netflix is on AWS I am doubtful of the last.

Total & Aramco come to mind.

Ok I buy that one. Oil and gas have some big problems..

Re: Back to the '70s with Serverless

#188

Post by sgt101 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #162
sgt101 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you are working at hyperscale yourselves already, and there are maybe 50 organisations like you out there. Maybe. Right now I don't think that there is a single telco that has the scale to break GCP, or a single manufacturing company (exempt Tesla) or a single energy company. Or bank. I agree that pharma, social media and streaming may do this. But since Netflix is on AWS I am doubtful of the last.

Plenty of scientific computing applications fall over on the "cloud", too. The LHC produces somewhere between 20-30 petabytes/year[0][1] (at a rate of about 200 Megabyte/second[2] after ignoring many "uninteresting" events) The LHC is a big name, but there are many other applications in disciplines like physics, genomics, meteorology etc for whom "just use the cloud" is a terrible suggestion. [0] https://www.popularm…

I think that alphafold may indicate that biotech isn't as disjoint from cloud solutions as many suppose. Super computing is also getting eaten as grid solutions go into hyperscale, but yes ..I find you LHC and the mega telescopes.

Re: Back to the '70s with Serverless

#189

Post by hyperman1 »

mjw1007 wrote: post #184
memetherapy wrote: post #145

One thing that surprised me as a latecomer to software development coming from a visual arts background is how much choice of technology and working practices are purely fashion driven. The thing about fashion is that the way if develops is largely arbitrary. Changes in fashion resemble a drunken walk through possible design space with the drunkard receiving regular shoves from "influencers" who are usually trying to…

As far as technology goes, I think what we describe as "fashion" is often mostly caused by a desire for safety in numbers, and to a large extent that's rational. If I pick the same language or framework or whatever as everyone else, there's a better chance it won't be abandoned, and when I want to integrate with some other project, someone else will already have done a great deal of the work.

Too true. On my job we have frameworks from the Architects, and stuff that drips in from outside.

The Architects typically buy some Framework from a Trustworthy Enterprise, as approved by the Gods of Gartner. Quality varies wildly, but if you move half a mm from the beaten path you're on your own. I gain a thumbleweed badge on stackoverflow every time I deal with their stuff.

Compare it to outside world stuff. Quality also varies wildly, but 5 minutes on Google generally delivers someone who already suffered trough hell for me, and forged some unholy pact with the technology in question.

Unfortunately, neither camp can choose a boring, proven, working technology that exists already a few years and is in common usage.

Re: Back to the '70s with Serverless

#190

Post by qz2 »

bob1029 wrote: post #185
qz2 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find frustrating is that if you are in a high stake environment it’s increasingly fashion driven too. I am in one of those environments where we can get prosecuted, big time. I tend to opt for a conservative engineering approach with maturity and security considerations being a key part of the design process. But no, fuck that, someone went to a conference, bought everything shiny and started a death-march of…

I dont understand why business leaders cannot see this for what it is and take back some control. Investors need to start asking more probing questions about how organizations develop and deploy applications. Perhaps if the money becomes contingent, people will start to give a shit about the engineering quality. At no point should "fun" be a line item when determining what technology to select in a high stake environ…

Problem with investors is that they pay third parties to do audits and third parties are filled with box tickers who ask a load of questions. You can strategically answer any question. So the game becomes how to answer the audit questions effectively rather than an honest appraisal of the situation.

Also it's not really fun. It's a frustration ridden shit show. You spend all day solving complex problems instead of building business value.

A fine example of where the tradeoff ends is spending three weeks solving fundamental networking issues due to stack complexity and immaturity.

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