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The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

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Re: The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

#31

Post by 101008 »

I feel identified with the first part of the article. I remember the problem about navigations and headers (and right sidebars!).

The first solution was of course framesets, but they were kind of ugly. Then iframes came, and they were almost perfect solution (at least for me). With no borders, they looked like an include. The only problem (and depending of your website) it was that the height was fixed (for headers that may not be a problem, but it was for left and right sidebars).

Of course, with PHP and includes everything became trivial. I kind of miss the old `index.php?cont=page1`...

Re: The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

#32

Post by jimbokun »

I sometimes wonder what the hell AWS Lambda is and whether or not I should care. Now I have a succint answer:

> What captured people's imaginations about AWS Lambda is that it lets you a) give any piece of code an URL, and b) that code doesn't consume resources when it's not being used. Yet these are also exactly the attributes possessed by PHP or CGI scripts.

From now on, when anyone mentions "AWS Lambda" I'm going to replace with "CGI" in my head.

Re: The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

#33

Post by throwaway22032 »

jimbokun wrote: post #32

I sometimes wonder what the hell AWS Lambda is and whether or not I should care. Now I have a succint answer: > What captured people's imaginations about AWS Lambda is that it lets you a) give any piece of code an URL, and b) that code doesn't consume resources when it's not being used. Yet these are also exactly the attributes possessed by PHP or CGI scripts. From now on, when anyone mentions "AWS Lambda" I'm going…

Basically everything AWS is things we already have but more expensive because someone else does the easiest bit for you.

Re: The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

#34

Post by jimbokun »

Stratoscope wrote: post #23
snovymgodym wrote: post #12

I like this article except for the part about Lambda. The author doesn't seem to get that for some use cases there are serious benefits to having bits of code that run only when you need it, and only getting billed for those runs instead of getting billed for a VM or container runtime that's always present. Obviously if your application involves processing a predictable high volume of requests, then you're probably b…

Here's the full quote: > For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Which is 100% true. And it's also true Dropbox was a great product because it provided this functionality for the vast majority of the population who don't have the time or interest to learn all those tools.

Re: The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

#35

Post by afavour »

jimbokun wrote: post #32

I sometimes wonder what the hell AWS Lambda is and whether or not I should care. Now I have a succint answer: > What captured people's imaginations about AWS Lambda is that it lets you a) give any piece of code an URL, and b) that code doesn't consume resources when it's not being used. Yet these are also exactly the attributes possessed by PHP or CGI scripts. From now on, when anyone mentions "AWS Lambda" I'm going…

The author’s assertion isn’t correct though.

Yes, technically speaking a PHP script that isn’t being executed isn’t itself costing you money. But it’s stored on server that is running 24/7 and is costing you money.

Set up in the traditional way, CGI/PHP is priced by server uptime, be that per hour, per day, per month, whatever. The server runs all the time, it waits for requests, it processes them.

By contrast Lambda only costs money while your code runs. There’s a big difference there. Pricing of the two is different enough that a Lambda isn’t automatically cheaper but it’s misleading to suggest it’s just a CGI/PHP script. And we haven’t even started on the differences around scaling etc.

Re: The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

#36

Post by untech »

jimbokun wrote: post #32

I sometimes wonder what the hell AWS Lambda is and whether or not I should care. Now I have a succint answer: > What captured people's imaginations about AWS Lambda is that it lets you a) give any piece of code an URL, and b) that code doesn't consume resources when it's not being used. Yet these are also exactly the attributes possessed by PHP or CGI scripts. From now on, when anyone mentions "AWS Lambda" I'm going…

I understand the sentiment, but to be fair, CGI doesn’t give you an infinite scalability. AWS Labmda based solution is far less susceptible to something like HN hug-of-death.

Re: The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

#37

Post by magicalhippo »

afavour wrote: post #35
jimbokun wrote: post #32

I sometimes wonder what the hell AWS Lambda is and whether or not I should care. Now I have a succint answer: > What captured people's imaginations about AWS Lambda is that it lets you a) give any piece of code an URL, and b) that code doesn't consume resources when it's not being used. Yet these are also exactly the attributes possessed by PHP or CGI scripts. From now on, when anyone mentions "AWS Lambda" I'm going…

The author’s assertion isn’t correct though. Yes, technically speaking a PHP script that isn’t being executed isn’t itself costing you money. But it’s stored on server that is running 24/7 and is costing you money. Set up in the traditional way, CGI/PHP is priced by server uptime, be that per hour, per day, per month, whatever. The server runs all the time, it waits for requests, it processes them. By contrast Lambda…

So it's like code-only shared hosting, billed by CPU-time rather than wall-time, and with a load balancer in front.

Re: The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

#38

Post by afavour »

magicalhippo wrote: post #37
afavour wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author’s assertion isn’t correct though. Yes, technically speaking a PHP script that isn’t being executed isn’t itself costing you money. But it’s stored on server that is running 24/7 and is costing you money. Set up in the traditional way, CGI/PHP is priced by server uptime, be that per hour, per day, per month, whatever. The server runs all the time, it waits for requests, it processes them. By contrast Lambda…

So it's like code-only shared hosting, billed by CPU-time rather than wall-time, and with a load balancer in front.

And it scales to multiple servers to accommodate traffic without your input. But essentially, yes.

Not to sound uncharitable but I’m confused by statements like the OPs who profess to not understanding what Lambda is… it’s not actually that complex!

Re: The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

#39

Post by amluto »

I think the real ability that got lost is the ability to easily mix and match multiple logically separate things. Once upon a time, if you have some slightly dynamic material and you also wanted to add some PDFs from the technical writers, the webmaster would do it in five minutes. Want a video? Just add a file. Need a form? Fire up some PHP or whatever. Want a support contact or FAQ? No big deal.

Now even big companies outsource their PDF hosting and viewing to a third party, they outsource their FAQ and support contact to a different fancy startup, surveys and similar forms to to yet another company, and the list goes on. The all-in-one website seems to be dead.

Re: The demise of the mildly dynamic website (2022)

#40

Post by tracerbulletx »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #33
jimbokun wrote: post #32

I sometimes wonder what the hell AWS Lambda is and whether or not I should care. Now I have a succint answer: > What captured people's imaginations about AWS Lambda is that it lets you a) give any piece of code an URL, and b) that code doesn't consume resources when it's not being used. Yet these are also exactly the attributes possessed by PHP or CGI scripts. From now on, when anyone mentions "AWS Lambda" I'm going…

Basically everything AWS is things we already have but more expensive because someone else does the easiest bit for you.

I don't know how anyone who experienced how Ops worked at companies before AWS can say things like this. Is AWS right for everyone economically? No. It is an impressive automation of software operations, that has driven the industry forwards by leaps and bounds. Yes.
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