Rethinking serverless with FLAME

Different types of concerns. Software engineers are most often concerned with writing software, not managing security settings, configuring services, and updating things. If you could declaratively write a single file which configures your server for you and then just copy paste that server state to 10,000 other servers, I'd be happy (you can, in fact, do this!)

Re: Rethinking serverless with FLAME

#9

Post by sgarland » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 2:25 PM UTC

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #8

sgarland wrote: post #4

[flagged]

Different types of concerns. Software engineers are most often concerned with writing software, not managing security settings, configuring services, and updating things. If you could declaratively write a single file which configures your server for you and then just copy paste that server state to 10,000 other servers, I'd be happy (you can, in fact, do this!)

Because they are not concerned with those things, the lack of knowledge in those areas creeps in.

If you don’t understand how the OS works at a very fundamental level, you will write sub-optimal code. This is usually fine, because people are smart, compilers are good, and hardware is absurdly fast. However, the fact remains that it’s probably giving up some bits here and there.

More germane to my point, though, the amount of libraries and tooling and abstractions being spun up to avoid having to run a server seems like more effort than its worth. Serverless sometimes has cost merits, but as a counterpoint, you can get a 1 year RI micro EC2 for something like $3/month. If your app is struggling to run on that, either you have the scale to justify more cash outlay, or your app has performance issues – and now we’re full circle back to the previous paragraph.

Re: Rethinking serverless with FLAME

#10

Post by shortrounddev2 » Wed, Dec 06, 2023, 2:31 PM UTC

sgarland wrote: post #9

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different types of concerns. Software engineers are most often concerned with writing software, not managing security settings, configuring services, and updating things. If you could declaratively write a single file which configures your server for you and then just copy paste that server state to 10,000 other servers, I'd be happy (you can, in fact, do this!)

Because they are not concerned with those things, the lack of knowledge in those areas creeps in. If you don’t understand how the OS works at a very fundamental level, you will write sub-optimal code. This is usually fine, because people are smart, compilers are good, and hardware is absurdly fast. However, the fact remains that it’s probably giving up some bits here and there. More germane to my point, though, the a…

The cost you are trying to save is not infrastructure, or compute time, it's labor. It's easier to find a junior javascript developer and then sandbox them inside docker or some serverless service than it is to find someone qualified to lock down a Linux box