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The issue I have is that, if you’re claiming to test the performance of Cloudflare workers vs. Fastly’s similar service and, especially, if you’re going to writ

The issue I have is that, if you’re claiming to test the performance of Cloudflare workers vs. Fastly’s similar service and, especially, if you’re going to write a blogpost about the statistical issues with Cloudflare’s benchmarks, you really should do your best to make the only difference the platform. So either JavaScript on both or rust on both so it’s obvious that the language and runtime aren’t the source of performance differences.

dmix 3y ago
That sounds like the most reasonable take
sophacles 3y ago
At the time this was going down, cloudflare had web assembly and fastly didn't. Fastly's complaint is "we don't offer the fast runtime so its unfair that you point out that you have a faster option while claiming you have a faster option."
- youngtaff 3y ago
  Fastly’s compute at edge has always been based on WASM… there have been some pretty interesting talks by Tyler McMullen, their CTO about it Cloudflare used JS for edge workers as their launch choice, and Fastly used Rust as their launch choice so of course it makes sense to compare the two most mature techs in their stacks The funny side point here is this is two unprofitable CDNs squabbling while the unfashionable Akamai just keeps making money — an interesting case of first mover advantage
  - dmix 3y ago
    First mover advantage has mostly been debunked as a strategy, the history of tech startups is littered with mildly successful first movers (Friendster being the classic go-to anecdote) that later gets dominated by 1-2 tech companies who do it better. Akamai's advantage is probably it's sales business and existing contracts. Workers is just business #1383 for Cloudflare which can take advantage of their freemium scaling model
    - youngtaff 3y ago
      So if first mover advantage has been debunked why is Akamai not only the largest CDN by sales but also the only profitable one too?

dmix 3y ago

That sounds like the most reasonable take

sophacles 3y ago

At the time this was going down, cloudflare had web assembly and fastly didn't. Fastly's complaint is "we don't offer the fast runtime so its unfair that you point out that you have a faster option while claiming you have a faster option."

youngtaff 3y ago
Fastly’s compute at edge has always been based on WASM… there have been some pretty interesting talks by Tyler McMullen, their CTO about it Cloudflare used JS for edge workers as their launch choice, and Fastly used Rust as their launch choice so of course it makes sense to compare the two most mature techs in their stacks The funny side point here is this is two unprofitable CDNs squabbling while the unfashionable Akamai just keeps making money — an interesting case of first mover advantage
- dmix 3y ago
  First mover advantage has mostly been debunked as a strategy, the history of tech startups is littered with mildly successful first movers (Friendster being the classic go-to anecdote) that later gets dominated by 1-2 tech companies who do it better. Akamai's advantage is probably it's sales business and existing contracts. Workers is just business #1383 for Cloudflare which can take advantage of their freemium scaling model
  - youngtaff 3y ago
    So if first mover advantage has been debunked why is Akamai not only the largest CDN by sales but also the only profitable one too?