Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What if serverless meant no backend servers?

subzero.cloud

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 138 posts

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#91

Post by IanCal »

samwillis wrote: post #85
dunham wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully the sync tech being developed for it is solidly open, but it's good to have access to your data regardless. The thing that always bothered me about that article is: > Notably, the object server is open source and self-hostable, which reduces the risk of being locked in to a service that might one day disappear. It appears that the object server is neither open source and nor self-hostable. The repository th…

There are many projects developing sync tech for local-first, I work on a fully open source one - ElectricSQL - and we are fortunate to have a couple of the CRDT co-inventors on the team. We maintain a list of any local-first sync project we know of here: https://electric-sql.com/docs/reference/alternatives

Electricsql looks cool but on a mobile browser the "local first" instant reactivity example is waaaay slower than the cloud version. Latencies of 600+ms Vs 120ms.

The comparison list is very useful as a collection, thank you.

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#92

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

I believe what the author is describing is called A Desktop Application. They were these crazy forms of web apps, that ran on a local computer, stored data locally, and didn't use a server. Or a web browser. Legend has it that they used little memory, were fast and snappy, and enabled native integration with all of an operating system's capabilities, widgets, etc, while still allowing a user to completely control what happens with the data the program used.

Porting this type of application could take a lot of work! So at some point, somebody invented a programming language called Java, which used a thing called a Virtual Machine, so that one application could run the same way on any computer that could run the Java Virtual Machine. They called this A Portable Desktop Application.

Unfortunately, this obscure language was somewhat difficult to use, so this paradigm was abandoned for simpler languages, and with it, so went the idea of A Portable Desktop Application.

Decades later, somebody reinvented the idea. But it required a much more limited application platform, running inside a kind of hacked-together document viewer, with a simplistic programming language designed to control how documents were displayed. It took about 1000x as much memory and CPU, but, with addition of about 50 different frameworks and 30 different new custom APIs, you could finally get close to the same functionality as the first solution.

Ah, technological progress...

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#93

Post by samwillis »

IanCal wrote: post #91
samwillis wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many projects developing sync tech for local-first, I work on a fully open source one - ElectricSQL - and we are fortunate to have a couple of the CRDT co-inventors on the team. We maintain a list of any local-first sync project we know of here: https://electric-sql.com/docs/reference/alternatives

Electricsql looks cool but on a mobile browser the "local first" instant reactivity example is waaaay slower than the cloud version. Latencies of 600+ms Vs 120ms. The comparison list is very useful as a collection, thank you.

Hmm, that's wrong. Will look into it, thanks!

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#94

Post by ocdtrekkie »

codepoet80 wrote: post #17
ijhuygft776 wrote: post #15

What we need is updates that only include security patches.... FEATURE CHANGES SHOULD BE OPTIONAL. Because all software tend to decrease in quality overtime.

If you're in the Microsoft world, try out the LTSC flavors (of Windows and Office). Its basically just that -- security updates and patches, no new features. Since switching, my environments have been much more stable, no Windows Updates that ruin my day -- just the stuff I need to stay secure, none of the new crap they're trying to push...

Even Office LTSC has to have policy changes applied to bypass some cloud functionality they stuffed in there, mind you.

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#95

Post by kkfx »

Mh, a small note: in the very past of IT DocUI was the norm. Actually WebUI are a limited and limiting DocUI, limited by the fact the user can't easy bend it to his/her own needs and desire, limiting because the WebVM underneath, the whole stack is NOT made for end-user programming as classic systems was.

Just try to look at a modern Emacs with org-mode and elisp: links. It's a DocUI, with some limits, but far more simpler than a WebApp in a local WebVM. And it's pretty local with full filesystem access and so on.

I'm curious how many more DECADES will be needed to reinvent the wheel discovering that classic local DocUIs are far superior and can be networked as we with technically. My own local fast GMail is notmuch-emacs, and it's not one, it's fully integrated and integrable by myself with few SLoC in my desktop. It's not so nice for some aspects not because of the model but because the little development base. If we invest a fraction of the effort put in modern web the classic desktop would outshine any other tech.

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#98

Post by jmull »

I believe what is being proposed is a static site where user data is persisted locally using the WASM sqlite + OPFS. I guess it is also organized like a typical web app, but the app logic and database logic run locally.

I was expecting something different because it started with phrases like "no servers at all" and "entirely without any servers", but there's a regular web server serving static files.

I'm not a fan of the term "serverfree", though, since there is a web server. Also, the app and database servers from classic web apps continue to exist, albeit in a logical, local form. If this term somehow catches on for this style of app it will just cause endless confusion. I suppose it isn't a lot worse than some existing terms we've gotten used to (like "serverless"), but I'm always going to advocate to not repeat the mistakes of the past.

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#99

Post by charcircuit »

samwillis wrote: post #50

These ideas are some of the founding principles of "local-first software": https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ As I like to put it - Local-first is the real serverless. Your user's device is the real edge. I think the future of the web needs to be that the server is optional, we need our data (albeit personal or our companies) to be on our own devices. We are all carrying around these massively powerful devices…

>let use that capability rather than offload everything to the cloud.

That costs battery life. With more powerful chips more time can be spent sleeping consuming minimal energy.

Re: What if serverless meant no backend servers?

#100

Post by forbiddenvoid »

solatic wrote: post #89

Show me where you store the data. If you store it on your phone, then it's not showing up on your other devices. If you lose or break your phone, then your data is gone. There are very few applications for which that's acceptable - basically just your calculator app. If you don't store it on your phone, then it's stored on some kind of server, somewhere . Do you own and control that server, or does someone else? How…

The article clearly states that data is stored on the device. That's the exact use case described - where people do not want any of their data stored on a server they don't control.

If that's you, and if privacy is important enough to you to want a local-only app, I think you'll find a solution to back up your data.

I don't think it's unreasonable to continue producing apps that do not require an internet connection to function and be useful.

Post reply on HN