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by nickjj 2871 days ago
I know of 1 large scale web application that is 100% driven by serverless technologies.

The user experience (as an end user using the website) is pretty terrible IMO. It often takes multiple seconds for various areas of the site to load (bound by the network). It's also super Javascript heavy and just doesn't feel good even on a fast desktop workstation.

Authentication is also a nightmare from a UX point of view. Every time I access the site it makes me click through an intermediate auth0 login screen.

I really hope this doesn't become a common trend to run web apps like this. It would make the web nearly unusable.

I'm not a "serverless" hater either. I want technology to move forward to make my life as a developer better. I don't care what tech it is, but right now I just don't get that impression from serverless set ups (both from the developer and end user POV).
4 comments
staticassertion 2871 days ago
Confused by why those issues are tied to serverless.

The only one that seems like it could even be related is the page loads being slower. But I'd be surprised if the issue were the serverless aspect of the architecture and not just that this software is apparently shoddy overall.

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myrloc 2871 days ago
Are you by chance referring to A Cloud Guru? I have the same auth0 and loading experience when using their site, and I suspect it's built on Lambda, but I'm not sure.
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atmosx 2871 days ago
It is indeed. They can't stop talking about it in their videos. That said, I used their resources, along with some other online resources to get my AWS Associate SA Certificate and I can say I was pretty pleased with the content.
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jkarneges 2871 days ago
Serverless doesn’t have to be slow/heavy. Here’s a chat demo I made recently using Fly: http://flychat.fanoutapp.com

Renders server-side, loads quick, minimal JS.

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gaius 2871 days ago
I know of 1 large scale web application that is 100% driven by serverless technologies.

In the mid-90’s it was common to run httpd via inetd. That lasted until HTTP 1.1 came along. I see people running websites out of Lambda now and just get a sense of deja vu. We realised this start-on-demand style didn’t scale for highly interactive use cases 20+ years ago!

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