4 ms·

> It's certainly much cheaper for some use cases but the complexity of the system goes up very quickly, and you're end up having to manage a lot of that complex

by rualca 6y ago

> It's certainly much cheaper for some use cases but the complexity of the system goes up very quickly, and you're end up having to manage a lot of that complexity using an inferior tool like Cloud Formation (or Terraform). The complexity bogeyman is a red herring. What is software development if not a constant fight between increasing complexity and adding features, including making systems more robust and resilient and reliable? Sure, you are free to claim that function-as-a-service paradigm is very complex because the code runs somewhere else, and you have to use a separate workflow than the one you're used to, and that you actually have to write unit tests to have some assurances that stuff does work as expected. But what would be the alternative approach? Would it be simpler to write a full-blown service that polls events and listens to message queues and launches background tasks? Obviously, no. AWS Lambda is a fancy way to let developers develop event-driven systems by just writing tiny event handlers and plug in events. It's no rocket science. In terms of complexity, they pale in comparison with even the tiniest hello world windows GUI app, or even Qt. I'm terms of web services, they are a service where you just have to write the request controller bit after that runs after all auth things passed and request messages were parsed and validated. Considering this, isn't it unreasonable to talk about increasing complexity, when everything was made.far simpler than what it would otherwise be?

paulryanrogers 6y ago
For a static site or basic CRUD some alternatives are bog standard HTML, CSS and maybe SSR framework
- edmundsauto 6y ago
  Wouldn't those be a bad fit for AWS Lambda, even by the opinions of most proponents of the service? IMO, one of the Netlify clones (JAMStack) is the best solution for these, so if you're running your own VPS for a static site, you're also not using the best tool for the job.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Wouldn't those be a bad fit for AWS Lambda, even by the opinions of most proponents of the service? Static site? Yes. Basic CRUD? Not sure about cost efficiency, but otherwise that’s right in the APIGateway+Lambda wheelhouse.
- rualca 6y ago
  > For a static site or basic CRUD some alternatives are bog standard HTML, CSS and maybe SSR framework Static sites do not involve any form of tasks being executed: you just serve dumb files and let everything happen client side. I fail to see how a usecases that involves zero computational needs, and arguably zero servers, is used as an example in a discussion about how to implement services.
iends 6y ago
In general, I found your post very strawmany... It's not really a red herring when Lambda mostly forces communication between different application layers to be over the network. You suddenly have to deal with rate limiting, retries, bulkheading, etc. in a lot more places than you would even with even a SOA. > you actually have to write unit tests I'm not really sure unit tests are a differing factor in testing functions as a service and other software. The real issue with testing is that it's very difficult if not impossible to do more than unit testing locally. You're often using docker containers or mock services to try and simulate what is going on in production which is insufficient. Things like CloudFormation can't be done locally (and this can be where a lot of gross complexity lies), so ultimately you have to set up an identical-to-prod testing environment and do the bulk of your testing there (which you probably should have anyway, but that's besides the point). Things like localstack HAVING to exist but not being supplied by AWS is a symptom of something gone wrong. > Would it be simpler to write a full-blown service that polls events and listens to message queues and launches background tasks? Obviously, no. Why is this obviously no? It isn't to me. You likely need a lot less these type of things if you're running a monolith. > In terms of complexity, they pale in comparison with even the tiniest hello world windows GUI app, or even Qt. It seems to me you're ignoring all the extra stuff you HAVE to have to deploy, secure, and maintain serverless. There is a lot more than the code for the function themselves.
- oceanplexian 6y ago
  Take something as simple as "I want to display a webpage that prints out some rows from a database". Well now you're deep into Terraform or CloudFormation, setting up API Gateway, building an authorizer, coming up with an API Schema, wiring up everything with IAM, setting up Route 53 and Certificate Manager, building CloudWatch Dashboards, etc etc. I hope you got all the permissions right because there are now 25 different places someone can maliciously gain access to your AWS account. And in order to change anything you should be prepared to update your IaaC schema once every couple months or it will all stop working. Back in days past you'd rent a hosted server or shell account (It was hideous, but bear with me), write 15 lines of PHP, connect to the included database, and you're done. It wasn't "web scale" but the time to reach a MVP was probably 1/100th that of the current era of gross complexity. And any one who built software in that time period had a very clear runway to bring it in house and run on bare-metal. No such thing exists in today's era of subscription-model infrastructure.

by rualca 6y ago

paulryanrogers 6y ago

For a static site or basic CRUD some alternatives are bog standard HTML, CSS and maybe SSR framework

edmundsauto 6y ago
Wouldn't those be a bad fit for AWS Lambda, even by the opinions of most proponents of the service? IMO, one of the Netlify clones (JAMStack) is the best solution for these, so if you're running your own VPS for a static site, you're also not using the best tool for the job.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Wouldn't those be a bad fit for AWS Lambda, even by the opinions of most proponents of the service? Static site? Yes. Basic CRUD? Not sure about cost efficiency, but otherwise that’s right in the APIGateway+Lambda wheelhouse.
rualca 6y ago
> For a static site or basic CRUD some alternatives are bog standard HTML, CSS and maybe SSR framework Static sites do not involve any form of tasks being executed: you just serve dumb files and let everything happen client side. I fail to see how a usecases that involves zero computational needs, and arguably zero servers, is used as an example in a discussion about how to implement services.

iends 6y ago

In general, I found your post very strawmany... It's not really a red herring when Lambda mostly forces communication between different application layers to be over the network. You suddenly have to deal with rate limiting, retries, bulkheading, etc. in a lot more places than you would even with even a SOA. > you actually have to write unit tests I'm not really sure unit tests are a differing factor in testing functions as a service and other software. The real issue with testing is that it's very difficult if not impossible to do more than unit testing locally. You're often using docker containers or mock services to try and simulate what is going on in production which is insufficient. Things like CloudFormation can't be done locally (and this can be where a lot of gross complexity lies), so ultimately you have to set up an identical-to-prod testing environment and do the bulk of your testing there (which you probably should have anyway, but that's besides the point). Things like localstack HAVING to exist but not being supplied by AWS is a symptom of something gone wrong. > Would it be simpler to write a full-blown service that polls events and listens to message queues and launches background tasks? Obviously, no. Why is this obviously no? It isn't to me. You likely need a lot less these type of things if you're running a monolith. > In terms of complexity, they pale in comparison with even the tiniest hello world windows GUI app, or even Qt. It seems to me you're ignoring all the extra stuff you HAVE to have to deploy, secure, and maintain serverless. There is a lot more than the code for the function themselves.

oceanplexian 6y ago
Take something as simple as "I want to display a webpage that prints out some rows from a database". Well now you're deep into Terraform or CloudFormation, setting up API Gateway, building an authorizer, coming up with an API Schema, wiring up everything with IAM, setting up Route 53 and Certificate Manager, building CloudWatch Dashboards, etc etc. I hope you got all the permissions right because there are now 25 different places someone can maliciously gain access to your AWS account. And in order to change anything you should be prepared to update your IaaC schema once every couple months or it will all stop working. Back in days past you'd rent a hosted server or shell account (It was hideous, but bear with me), write 15 lines of PHP, connect to the included database, and you're done. It wasn't "web scale" but the time to reach a MVP was probably 1/100th that of the current era of gross complexity. And any one who built software in that time period had a very clear runway to bring it in house and run on bare-metal. No such thing exists in today's era of subscription-model infrastructure.