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Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

erikbern.com

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Re: Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

#11

Post by zsoltkacsandi »

whoiskatrin wrote: post #9
zsoltkacsandi wrote: post #2

The author apparently does not have any experience in building systems/infrastructure. > I can set up a static website in AWS, but it takes 45 steps in the console and 12 of them are highly confusing if you never did it before Anything can be confusing/takes time if you never did before. Getting productive needs time and practice. If your goal is only to set up a static site, AWS is an overkill for it. > It's sad thi…

I think it's important to understand that this was his opinion in 2021. Things have changed since, and hopefully, all these solutions are available now.

TBH, in 2018 I already used the things he was complaining about, so my opinion still stands.

Re: Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

#12

Post by zsoltkacsandi »

sciurus wrote: post #10
zsoltkacsandi wrote: post #2

The author apparently does not have any experience in building systems/infrastructure. > I can set up a static website in AWS, but it takes 45 steps in the console and 12 of them are highly confusing if you never did it before Anything can be confusing/takes time if you never did before. Getting productive needs time and practice. If your goal is only to set up a static site, AWS is an overkill for it. > It's sad thi…

> I don’t even understand what the author wants here. There is no such thing “truly serverless” The author says what they want. It's literally their next sentence: "As in, I don't want to think about future resource needs, I just want things to magically handle it." and they have four bullet points with examples of what this means to them earlier. I think it's fair to argue about the desirability, achievability, etc…

Let's see:

- Why do I have to think about the underlying pool of resources? Just maintain it for me.

- I don't ever want to provision anything in advance of load.

- I don't want to pay for idle resources. Just let me pay for whatever resources I'm actually using.

- Serverless doesn't mean it's a burstable VM that saves its instance state to disk during periods of idle.

This article was written in 2021.

AWS Lambda was introduced in 2014 that fulfilled all of those requirements in those bullet points that you mentioned. Google App Engine is the same, it was introduced in 2008.

So again, this article tells only one thing: that the author does not know what he is talking about.

Re: Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

#13

Post by phrotoma »

> You know how crappy software is crappy in ways that are so blatantly obvious to the user that you wonder why it was released?

It has crossed my mind several times recently that I want a word to describe this exact state of affairs. Where a thing has a defect so blatant that it is evident to any user that the creator of the thing has never tried using it.

Eg. an airbnb with no towels in it.

What's the word for this situation?

Re: Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

#14

Post by fhuici »

> The speed that's not there is setting up infrastructure. If I make a change in the AWS console, or if I add a new pod to Kubernetes, or whatever, I want that to happen in seconds. I'm not asking for milliseconds!

Milliseconds is now possible: https://kraft.cloud/ (e.g., an NGINX web server in under 20 millis).

Re: Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

#15

Post by opentokix »

zsoltkacsandi wrote: post #2

The author apparently does not have any experience in building systems/infrastructure. > I can set up a static website in AWS, but it takes 45 steps in the console and 12 of them are highly confusing if you never did it before Anything can be confusing/takes time if you never did before. Getting productive needs time and practice. If your goal is only to set up a static site, AWS is an overkill for it. > It's sad thi…

He is from spotify, he dont have any experience full stop.

Re: Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

#16

Post by jasode »

zsoltkacsandi wrote: post #8
kitd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing “truly serverless”. Your code will be executed by a server. This is nit-picky. "Serverless" refers to the "dev", not the "ops", and has done for a while. Fortunately we have Terraform that’s made this possible for a decade(?). Setting up production-grade DBs in Terraform is easy?

> Setting up production-grade DBs in Terraform is easy? Oh, yes, it is. Setting up the resources actually the easiest part, most of the problems originate from the phenomenon that as the developers starts to use more and more "serverless" things, they know less about how the underlying technology works, how to use indexes, structure the database, how replication or transaction works. Production readiness is not just…

>There is no such thing “truly serverless”. Your code will be executed by a server. Period.

>Your application will run on one or multiple CPUs, will use the memory, the disk, the network.

But the term "serverless" has never meant "serverless does not run on cpu, does not use any RAM, and does not use disk or network."

You're attempting a clarification for "serverless" that nobody needs because reasonable people didn't actually think serverless/LambdaFunctions/CloudWorkers/etc defied the laws of physics.

"Serverless" from the beginning has always meant not having to do "os management/operations" type of tasks in a vm such as:

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install 
  [...]
Instead, the cloud vendors created ability to run stateless functions which are executed in a "cloud runtime". The "dev" focuses the effort on coding the stateless functions instead of Linux os housekeeping tasks.

And yes -- to pre-empt the discussion from going around in circles... the "cloud's runtime" for stateless functions do ultimately run on a "server" which runs on cpu/memory/disk. And yes, "the cloud is just somebody else's computer". I think we all know that.

Re: Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

#17

Post by cassianoleal »

szszrk wrote: post #7
kitd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing “truly serverless”. Your code will be executed by a server. This is nit-picky. "Serverless" refers to the "dev", not the "ops", and has done for a while. Fortunately we have Terraform that’s made this possible for a decade(?). Setting up production-grade DBs in Terraform is easy?

If done perpetually - yes. The autor does make some weird arguments and seem to be creating an emotional setting for something. Like his own product you guys mentioned. My pods ARE ready in seconds. Wondering why his are not.

> My pods ARE ready in seconds. Wondering why his are not.

That's what I was thinking too. What kind of underpowered, crappy k8s cluster is this person running where pods take minutes to spin up?

Re: Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

#18

Post by fbergen »

I would love to have what we were sold as a “truly” serverless (even though the name doesn’t mean no server)

- CloudRun did a good job, but the autoscaling is too slow to not pay for idle

- Lambda is great, but I want to run way more complex workloads than simple functions

Re: Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

#19

Post by phillipcarter »

zsoltkacsandi wrote: post #4
samuell wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The author apparently does not have any experience in building systems/infrastructure. Well, he built https://modal.com , one of the coolest things since sliced mangoes, and before that https://github.com/spotify/luigi

I don’t care what he built if he justifies his arguments with distorted facts and complains about lack of things that have been around for a decade.

When you make statements like this:

> There is no such thing “truly serverless”. Your code will be executed by a server. Period.

It indicates that maybe you are the one who's missing the point. The author is not saying anything about wanting code that magically runs on a server without running on a server.

Re: Software Infrastructure 2.0: A Wishlist (2021)

#20

Post by fbergen »

fbergen wrote: post #18

I would love to have what we were sold as a “truly” serverless (even though the name doesn’t mean no server) - CloudRun did a good job, but the autoscaling is too slow to not pay for idle - Lambda is great, but I want to run way more complex workloads than simple functions

Am I asking too much? =P
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