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Isn't the point of running these serverless components on data-centers closer to the edge to reduce latency in emerging IoT applications? My question is why wo

Isn't the point of running these serverless components on data-centers closer to the edge to reduce latency in emerging IoT applications? My question is why would I want to run an unmodified application on this? Because of existing business logic in the form of shared libraries that I'd like to leverage, unmodified?

davemp 8y ago
> My question is why would I want to run an unmodified application on this? Complete straw-man here, but this is what I envision: Ignorant businessmen buys a new silver bullet from a (potentially ignorant or malicious) salesperson or idea broker then wants you to "make it work" on the "serverless cloud". Most B2B software provides no reasonable method of determining if their product(s) actually work. So changing the amalgamation of your boss's silver bullets (your business application) requires the rebuilding of a hard won set of folk knowledge. This task is terrifying, unproductive, potentially impossible (non-permissive licenses), and something that most developers in this situation would like to avoid. Of course there are decent ways to avoid and/or address situations like the one described, but this seems close to what I've witnessed in industry.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I actually have experienced basically the opposite sort of thing. There are monolothic applications and overly restrictive central IT processes where the “folk knowledge” you describe is basically a job-security obfuscation tactic for developers to wield political control and act as credit-mongering constraints on what other developer teams might want to do, under the guise of it all being for the safety or stability of the monoliths (which are already unstable and unsafe). Particularly in cases where multiplicity of different runtime environments is critical for innovation, this central IT bureaucracy can be totally killer. The worst is when outside consultants come in and just reinforce what the central IT people are already stonewalling with. For this reason, it can actually be great when new silver bullets come in from consultants who are able to break that hegemony. Sure, the silver bullets are dipshitty business crap, but if it at least offers a hook for using better modern tooling, you can successfully not die from the central IT crap. Then by showing the results of the new tools, you can undermine the “folk knowledge” gate keeper people, and force them to be honest about the declining business value of protecting the so-called stable legacy monoliths.

davemp 8y ago

> My question is why would I want to run an unmodified application on this? Complete straw-man here, but this is what I envision: Ignorant businessmen buys a new silver bullet from a (potentially ignorant or malicious) salesperson or idea broker then wants you to "make it work" on the "serverless cloud". Most B2B software provides no reasonable method of determining if their product(s) actually work. So changing the amalgamation of your boss's silver bullets (your business application) requires the rebuilding of a hard won set of folk knowledge. This task is terrifying, unproductive, potentially impossible (non-permissive licenses), and something that most developers in this situation would like to avoid. Of course there are decent ways to avoid and/or address situations like the one described, but this seems close to what I've witnessed in industry.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I actually have experienced basically the opposite sort of thing. There are monolothic applications and overly restrictive central IT processes where the “folk knowledge” you describe is basically a job-security obfuscation tactic for developers to wield political control and act as credit-mongering constraints on what other developer teams might want to do, under the guise of it all being for the safety or stability of the monoliths (which are already unstable and unsafe). Particularly in cases where multiplicity of different runtime environments is critical for innovation, this central IT bureaucracy can be totally killer. The worst is when outside consultants come in and just reinforce what the central IT people are already stonewalling with. For this reason, it can actually be great when new silver bullets come in from consultants who are able to break that hegemony. Sure, the silver bullets are dipshitty business crap, but if it at least offers a hook for using better modern tooling, you can successfully not die from the central IT crap. Then by showing the results of the new tools, you can undermine the “folk knowledge” gate keeper people, and force them to be honest about the declining business value of protecting the so-called stable legacy monoliths.