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by bob1029 123 days ago
> Not using Function as a Service(FaaS) more

FaaS is almost certainly a mistake. I get the appeal from an accountant's perspective, but from a debugging and development perspective it's really fucking awful compared to using a traditional VM. Getting at logs in something like azure functions is a great example of this.

I pushed really hard for FaaS until I had to support it. It's the worst kind of trap. I still get sweaty thinking about some of the issues we had with it.
2 comments
CodesInChaos 123 days ago
What's the issue with logging? I would have expected stdout/stderr to get automatically transferred to the providers managed logging solution (e.g. cloudwatch).

Though I never really understood the appeal of FaaS over something like Google-Cloud-Run.

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bruce343434 123 days ago
As a developer who spent a couple months developing a microservice using aws lambda functions:

it SUCKS. There's no interactive debugging. Deploy for a minute or 5 depending on the changes, then trigger the lambda, wait another 5 minutes for all the logs to show up. Then proceed with printf/stack trace debugging.

For reasons that I forgot, locally running the lambda code on my dev box was not applicable. Locally deploying the cloud environment neither.

I wasn't around for the era but I imagine it's like working on an ancient mainframe with long compile times and a very slow printer.

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icedchai 122 days ago
I've witnessed developers editing Lambda code live in the AWS console. It is extremely painful to watch.
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AIorNot 123 days ago
Lol exactly
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icedchai 122 days ago
Cloud Run is one service where GCP really shines. It is very flexible: handles services and long running background jobs, less annoying run time limitations like you find in Lambda.
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antonyt 122 days ago
> Getting at logs in something like azure functions is a great example of this.

This is the least of the problems I've experienced with Azure Functions. You'd have to try very hard to NOT end up with useful logs in Application Insights if you use any of the standard Functions project templates. I'm wondering how this went wrong for you?

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