39 ms·

Fermyon wants to reinvent the way programmers develop microservices

14 points by kiyanwang 4y ago

solardev 4y ago
I have no idea what this article is saying. It reads like an AI put together a bunch of buzzwords: A quasi-serverless WebAssembly CLI by former Microsofters will free you from Kubernetes and get you a bunch of GitHub stars from women and minorities in different time zones. Huh?
- rmnclmnt 4y ago
  And apparently this AI generated pitch managed to raise 6M$!
  - solardev 4y ago
    Does that say more about AI or humans?
    - rmnclmnt 4y ago
      Maximum cynism has been reached, mission accomplished
  - asciiresort 4y ago
    Just wait until you learn about The We Company.
- johng4lt 4y ago
  Skimming through it, I think they mean they've created a PaaS that would run your code (i.e., platform for "serverless" apps). But under the hood your code will not be started as a docker container & stuff but rather compiled to WASM allowing them to reduce the overhead. They've created an open-source tool for pushing your code to their proprietary platform and it's already got 1000 stars on Github. They are a remote company that, obviously, hires people (including women & minorities) in different time zones. They're using Slack for communication.
  - solardev 4y ago
    So it's just a serverless function running in WASM? The article didn't make that very clear. > If you’re thinking the solution sounds a lot like serverless, you’re not wrong... > So the idea was to take the best of serverless and microservices, and combine them on this new platform that mostly removed Kubernetes... > “What we really wanted was the serverless experience, right?... Still sounds just like serverless. But it's not? Or it is, and then some? I dunno. > Spin is an instrumental piece of Fermyon that makes it easy for users to run production workloads with WebAssembly, and it achieved 1,000 GitHub stars within the first six weeks after its release,” according to the company. Still doesn't tell us what it does... > using Slack Lol, definitely the thing I need to know in order to understand a new company & service. They use time zones too? Oh wow, now THAT's innovation. Thanks, TechCrunch...
politelemon 4y ago
Read this bit again, it feels very bizarre to me and is like they're misunderstanding how server side development and containers work...? > The whole isolation model that keeps WebAssembly from being able to attack the hosts through the browser was the same kind of [security] model we wanted on the cloud side,” Butcher explained. I then went to the fermyon.com website, and their first line says > WebAssembly-powered cloud tools And later in the page leads to the WASM 'component model' at https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model/blob/main/design/high-level/Goals.md https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model/blob/main/des... which actually mentions that! > Embeddability: design components to be embedded in a diverse set of host execution environments, including browsers, servers, intermediaries, small devices and data-intensive systems. So now I'm extra confused. WASM lets you run compiled languages like C# in the browser. You can already run that on the server side. You can run it in a container. What problem is WASM solving here? Unfortunately the language is hard to follow so even if they have answered it, it's not very accessible.
- johng4lt 4y ago
  > You can already run that on the server side. You can run it in a container. What problem is WASM solving here? As I understand it, they let you run your code on their servers. Their proprietary WASM solution is used for isolation of different processes instead of containers, virtualization & stuff.
  - drpyser22 4y ago
    Isn't it open source?
- solardev 4y ago
  The article is so obfuscated it's hard to know what they're actually selling. My guess is that it's something similar to Cloudflare Workers + WebAssembly (https://blog.cloudflare.com/webassembly-on-cloudflare-workers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/webassembly-on-cloudflare-worker...), meaning a serverless function. In Cloudflare's case, the main worker itself works in JS, but can import WASM modules. In Fermyon's case, you can compile directly to WASM, skip the JS layer, and the framework will set you up with HTTP endpoints to handle requests. Why WASM? It's faster, and lets you transpile from other common backend languages so you don't have to write JS, I guess. So like they containerize WASM for you into serverless functions that you don't have to micromanage yourself. Send it some data-intensive task and get back some data. Like a remote procedure call, almost? Or at least that is my GUESS. No idea if any of that's right... the article and website aren't clear at all.
mr_vile 4y ago
Ok, but can we keep the ads off HN? :)
unraveller 4y ago
Not nearly as ambitious as wasmCloud[1]. Fermyon will do simple wasm worker hosting with a "spin deploy" https://www.fermyon.dev https://www.fermyon.dev has more information about how the underlying platform operates on their end. Nomad is mentioned but not the VM of choice that will underpin the cold-start times they boast of. e.g. SecondStateVM(wasmEdge) claims fastest 20ms cold-start [2] [1] https://wasmcloud.com/blog/globally_distributed_webassembly_applications_with_wasmcloud_and_nats/ https://wasmcloud.com/blog/globally_distributed_webassembly_... [2] https://github.com/WasmEdge/WasmEdge https://github.com/WasmEdge/WasmEdge

14 points by kiyanwang 4y ago

I have no idea what this article is saying. It reads like an AI put together a bunch of buzzwords: A quasi-serverless WebAssembly CLI by former Microsofters will free you from Kubernetes and get you a bunch of GitHub stars from women and minorities in different time zones. Huh?

rmnclmnt 4y ago
And apparently this AI generated pitch managed to raise 6M$!
- solardev 4y ago
  Does that say more about AI or humans?
  - rmnclmnt 4y ago
    Maximum cynism has been reached, mission accomplished
- asciiresort 4y ago
  Just wait until you learn about The We Company.
johng4lt 4y ago
Skimming through it, I think they mean they've created a PaaS that would run your code (i.e., platform for "serverless" apps). But under the hood your code will not be started as a docker container & stuff but rather compiled to WASM allowing them to reduce the overhead. They've created an open-source tool for pushing your code to their proprietary platform and it's already got 1000 stars on Github. They are a remote company that, obviously, hires people (including women & minorities) in different time zones. They're using Slack for communication.
- solardev 4y ago
  So it's just a serverless function running in WASM? The article didn't make that very clear. > If you’re thinking the solution sounds a lot like serverless, you’re not wrong... > So the idea was to take the best of serverless and microservices, and combine them on this new platform that mostly removed Kubernetes... > “What we really wanted was the serverless experience, right?... Still sounds just like serverless. But it's not? Or it is, and then some? I dunno. > Spin is an instrumental piece of Fermyon that makes it easy for users to run production workloads with WebAssembly, and it achieved 1,000 GitHub stars within the first six weeks after its release,” according to the company. Still doesn't tell us what it does... > using Slack Lol, definitely the thing I need to know in order to understand a new company & service. They use time zones too? Oh wow, now THAT's innovation. Thanks, TechCrunch...

politelemon 4y ago

Read this bit again, it feels very bizarre to me and is like they're misunderstanding how server side development and containers work...? > The whole isolation model that keeps WebAssembly from being able to attack the hosts through the browser was the same kind of [security] model we wanted on the cloud side,” Butcher explained. I then went to the fermyon.com website, and their first line says > WebAssembly-powered cloud tools And later in the page leads to the WASM 'component model' at https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model/blob/main/design/high-level/Goals.md https://github.com/WebAssembly/component-model/blob/main/des... which actually mentions that! > Embeddability: design components to be embedded in a diverse set of host execution environments, including browsers, servers, intermediaries, small devices and data-intensive systems. So now I'm extra confused. WASM lets you run compiled languages like C# in the browser. You can already run that on the server side. You can run it in a container. What problem is WASM solving here? Unfortunately the language is hard to follow so even if they have answered it, it's not very accessible.

johng4lt 4y ago
> You can already run that on the server side. You can run it in a container. What problem is WASM solving here? As I understand it, they let you run your code on their servers. Their proprietary WASM solution is used for isolation of different processes instead of containers, virtualization & stuff.
- drpyser22 4y ago
  Isn't it open source?
solardev 4y ago
The article is so obfuscated it's hard to know what they're actually selling. My guess is that it's something similar to Cloudflare Workers + WebAssembly (https://blog.cloudflare.com/webassembly-on-cloudflare-workers/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/webassembly-on-cloudflare-worker...), meaning a serverless function. In Cloudflare's case, the main worker itself works in JS, but can import WASM modules. In Fermyon's case, you can compile directly to WASM, skip the JS layer, and the framework will set you up with HTTP endpoints to handle requests. Why WASM? It's faster, and lets you transpile from other common backend languages so you don't have to write JS, I guess. So like they containerize WASM for you into serverless functions that you don't have to micromanage yourself. Send it some data-intensive task and get back some data. Like a remote procedure call, almost? Or at least that is my GUESS. No idea if any of that's right... the article and website aren't clear at all.

mr_vile 4y ago

Ok, but can we keep the ads off HN? :)

unraveller 4y ago

Not nearly as ambitious as wasmCloud[1]. Fermyon will do simple wasm worker hosting with a "spin deploy" https://www.fermyon.dev https://www.fermyon.dev has more information about how the underlying platform operates on their end. Nomad is mentioned but not the VM of choice that will underpin the cold-start times they boast of. e.g. SecondStateVM(wasmEdge) claims fastest 20ms cold-start [2] [1] https://wasmcloud.com/blog/globally_distributed_webassembly_applications_with_wasmcloud_and_nats/ https://wasmcloud.com/blog/globally_distributed_webassembly_... [2] https://github.com/WasmEdge/WasmEdge https://github.com/WasmEdge/WasmEdge