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AWS Is Asleep at the Lambda Wheel

lastweekinaws.com

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Re: AWS Is Asleep at the Lambda Wheel

#21

Post by [deleted] »

ericpauley wrote: post #3
tiew9Vii wrote: post #2

> We’ve been able to use custom runtimes ourselves for a while, and via the magic of Docker container images we can basically make Lambda run whatever the heck we want it to. Unfortunately, building our own Python runtimes at home isn’t sustainable as a customer Custom runtimes with Docker images solves so many issues with Lambda. Artifact management for free and the ability to run whatever language/applicaiton you w…

Totally agree. I wouldn't be surprised if Amazon is viewing the premade runtimes as a legacy option, with containers being the default (and eventually only) method in the future.

[deleted]

Re: AWS Is Asleep at the Lambda Wheel

#22

Post by BFLpL0QNek »

metadat wrote: post #15
Twirrim wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experiences working there, AWS is a feature mill. They've built their entire sense of self around shipping features. Stuff for Jeff Barr to blog about (that's no diss on Jeff, I think he does an awesome job). They can't get off that horse they've decided to ride because they're concerned if they do they'll be seen as having stopped innovating, but they're also not willing to provide headcount to meet both inn…

> that's no diss on Jeff, I think he does an awesome job Honest question: How is Lambda runtime version rot acceptable to an "awesome" top exec like Jeff Barr? Is someone else demanding he siphon resources away from maintaining key services? What data-driven metric says maintaining service quality shouldn't be continually prioritized? I'm open to any explanation, but the logical conclusion I see if the lack of priori…

They’ve provided custom runtimes which removes the need completely for managed runtimes giving you whatever version you like. They also did it in a way with Docker that’s simple and powerful.

If I was an AWS exec I’d say managed runtimes are legacy, with the introduction of containers move to containers for new deploys.

I’ve been critical of Lambda in the past and critical when people use Kubernetes/Docker because it’s Kubernetes/Docker. The container support in Lambda has been a game changer, it’s one of them now they’ve done it you think why didn’t they think of that earlier, it’s a great fit.

Re: AWS Is Asleep at the Lambda Wheel

#23

Post by __turbobrew__ »

tiew9Vii wrote: post #2

> We’ve been able to use custom runtimes ourselves for a while, and via the magic of Docker container images we can basically make Lambda run whatever the heck we want it to. Unfortunately, building our own Python runtimes at home isn’t sustainable as a customer Custom runtimes with Docker images solves so many issues with Lambda. Artifact management for free and the ability to run whatever language/applicaiton you w…

This is the way. The only drawback of docker on lambda is slower cold start times (which may have changed since I built on lambda)

Re: AWS Is Asleep at the Lambda Wheel

#24

Post by MaxDPS »

Waterluvian wrote: post #14

Seems like a pretty strong case against “serverless.” There’s always a server. You just have zero control over this one. So you’re stuck defactoring code to run an older version of Python because you can’t upgrade Python.

It would be a case against server less if Lambda were the only option. You’re always free to setup your own container which would still give you control over all of that.

Re: AWS Is Asleep at the Lambda Wheel

#25

Post by mdaniel »

wallace_g wrote: post #8
JPKab wrote: post #4

This is a great article, and sums up my team's frustrations with AWS Lambda and the AWS engineering leadership in general. I worked in the past under a slew of former AWS product managers, and I know from them how the AWS roadmap works: 1.) Real, crucial customer feedback is incorporated into roadmap, usually for the core services that are already used extensively like Lambda. 2.) Executives have new, novel, sexy fla…

What are your issues with Google cloud?

Whooowee, pull up a chair and grab a drink

Their IAM is a raging tire fire. Disturbingly stupid for such an advanced organization. I'm on my phone so the rant will have to be left at that for now, but people can bitch about AWS IAM all they like, at least it was designed and thought out versus the GCP "works on my machine, ohh I got promoted now it's someone else's problem". Words fail me how angry GCP IAM makes me

I know this isn't a "cool kid" thing to say but the lack of CloudFormation makes deploying into other people's GCP more painful than necessary, which has an intersection with my IAM comment because Role bindings are authoritative (in both gcloud and terraform) so oh, you want to add a member to `role/editor` but leave the rest of the members alone? Tough! I had high hopes for Deployment Manager but it doesn't support hardly any of the resources and there's no one click URL to roll out the yaml anyway

And congratulations, you just created your first Project in GCP: now you want to run Cloud Functions? Well prepare to spend the next hours of your life turning on the necessary APIs for that project because unlike AWS where everything works to your credit limit, GCP is that blank room in the Matrix. For ever project, every time. It's like GCP has amnesia. What APIs are necessary, you may ask? Who knows, just try something, read the 403 it gives you back, rinse and repeat

Re: AWS Is Asleep at the Lambda Wheel

#26

Post by 8note »

metadat wrote: post #15
Twirrim wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experiences working there, AWS is a feature mill. They've built their entire sense of self around shipping features. Stuff for Jeff Barr to blog about (that's no diss on Jeff, I think he does an awesome job). They can't get off that horse they've decided to ride because they're concerned if they do they'll be seen as having stopped innovating, but they're also not willing to provide headcount to meet both inn…

> that's no diss on Jeff, I think he does an awesome job Honest question: How is Lambda runtime version rot acceptable to an "awesome" top exec like Jeff Barr? Is someone else demanding he siphon resources away from maintaining key services? What data-driven metric says maintaining service quality shouldn't be continually prioritized? I'm open to any explanation, but the logical conclusion I see if the lack of priori…

This sounds like it would fall under

"Earns trust"

For the Amazon leadership principles.

(From an Amazon cdo engineer looking over at aws, nothing official of course)

Developers gain trust in AWS lambda by having it support the current runtimes, and keeping the old ones running for a long time. Lambda will always run the functions you want it to.

For some tension:

When I've taken free beers to chat with the lambda folks, it seems like they have a linearly growing oe burden for each new runtime version they support, and at least 4 or 5 years ago, I couldn't see a path towards avoiding that

Re: AWS Is Asleep at the Lambda Wheel

#27

Post by Dunedan »

BFLpL0QNek wrote: post #22
metadat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's no diss on Jeff, I think he does an awesome job Honest question: How is Lambda runtime version rot acceptable to an "awesome" top exec like Jeff Barr? Is someone else demanding he siphon resources away from maintaining key services? What data-driven metric says maintaining service quality shouldn't be continually prioritized? I'm open to any explanation, but the logical conclusion I see if the lack of priori…

They’ve provided custom runtimes which removes the need completely for managed runtimes giving you whatever version you like. They also did it in a way with Docker that’s simple and powerful. If I was an AWS exec I’d say managed runtimes are legacy, with the introduction of containers move to containers for new deploys. I’ve been critical of Lambda in the past and critical when people use Kubernetes/Docker because it…

> If I was an AWS exec I’d say managed runtimes are legacy, with the introduction of containers move to containers for new deploys.

If they do that they remove one of the key benefits of AWS Lambda and that's that customers don't have to care about the underlying operating system and just have to care about their function code.

And I'm sure if they'd would look at the numbers of how many AWS Lambda Functions use zip packages vs. Docker images they'd see that something like >90% use zip packages. Based on that they'd be insane to deprecate the use of zip packages.

Re: AWS Is Asleep at the Lambda Wheel

#28

Post by 8note »

dax77 wrote: post #7

Python 3.11 is ~25% faster… Lambda is billed based on compute duration… if you are AWS PM Lead, it’s a challenging eng investment to justify.

With dogfooding, it's a pretty easy argument

-non-aws Amazon engineer

It definitely feels like Amazon wants everyone to use lambdas for everything in the non-aws world (opinions my own)

Re: AWS Is Asleep at the Lambda Wheel

#30

Post by jfim »

JPKab wrote: post #11
wallace_g wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your issues with Google cloud?

I had a horrific support experience due to a product (it was a predecessor to Colab that they eventually just cancelled) that was (due to a bug that they eventually fixed) triggering the startup of expensive instances randomly that cost hundreds of dollars a week to run. I couldn't get any help, until I eventually out of desperation found a BigQuery evangelist on a Reddit forum who escalated my issue. Venting rant be…

> BTW, am I the only one who bought a Google Home speaker [...] and had it literally lose features a year after I bought it

There are tons of other features that are rotting on Google home/assistant. It used to be that one could set a location based reminder on the assistant ("hey Google remind me when I get home to do the laundry") but they removed that, for example.

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