[HN Gopher] Edge Scripting: Build and run applications at the edge
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       Edge Scripting: Build and run applications at the edge
        
       Author : gnabgib
       Score  : 54 points
       Date   : 2024-11-07 18:17 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bunny.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bunny.net)
        
       | jsheard wrote:
       | They're undercutting CF Workers - requests are $0.2/million
       | rather than $0.3/million, and CPU time costs the same.
       | 
       | Seems pretty good on paper. There's no free allowance like you
       | get with Workers though.
        
         | j45 wrote:
         | If cost is a factor, one could plausibly put bunny behind
         | cloudflare's free side.
         | 
         | Another positive side effect would be to have paid dual
         | redundancy then too.
         | 
         | Backblaze is another neighbour that plays nice with bunny.
        
       | skybrian wrote:
       | I was wondering how this compares to Deno Deploy. From an API
       | point of view, it looks rather limited? They seem to have some
       | storage offerings but it's unclear how they connect.
        
       | __MatrixMan__ wrote:
       | Wouldn't running on the edge of the internet mean running on the
       | devices that I see when I look around my house? It feel like this
       | serverless thing is rather serverful, unless I've overlooked the
       | part where users are running a node somewhere.
        
         | jsheard wrote:
         | It's generally taken to mean "close enough to the edge that
         | latency is negligible regardless of where your users are".
        
         | FireInsight wrote:
         | I guess edge is just a buzzword, maybe it is like a metaphor;
         | if you think of the internet as a sphere users reach to for
         | content, something being on the edge means you don't have to
         | reach that hard, it's right there on top. Or maybe it means
         | _close to the edge_ , close to end-user devices.
         | 
         | Serverless is definitely a misnomer, but it means that you
         | don't 'own' the server your thing is running on, there are some
         | restrictions and you can't run anything you could on an actual
         | VPS or hardware box. So in a way the server is abstracted away.
         | You just use resources, but those could be anywhere, running on
         | any node of the edge network.
        
           | __MatrixMan__ wrote:
           | Right after CenturyLink rebranded to Lumen, but before I
           | heard about it, I clicked a buzzword-laden link looking for
           | people involved in "Edge Computing". I had been writing
           | vehicle traffic controller firmware and thought "hey, I guess
           | I'm doing edge computing--out here at the curb--maybe I
           | should check this out."
           | 
           | Turns out, they meant installing modems in people's houses.
           | Edge, it would seem, is a very versatile buzzword.
        
           | toast0 wrote:
           | I feel like Edge is more acceptable; running at a PoP is
           | close to the edge; running inside an ISP network is even
           | closer; it's not really achievable, but running in ISP
           | managed modems or cellular base stations is pretty much the
           | limit of plausible Edge computing.
           | 
           | Serverless really should mean the client does the work, but
           | it seems pretty equivalent to shared hosting. Dreamhost (and
           | the shell account you used to get with an ISP!) was
           | serverless before it was cool?
        
             | __MatrixMan__ wrote:
             | When I hear "Edge" I imagine that it keeps working if you
             | remove the ISP (e.g. it'll still talk to with other stuff
             | on the LAN) but it works better when the internet is
             | available. Like bit torrent.
             | 
             | I'm aware that what they usually mean is significantly less
             | interesting.
        
         | apitman wrote:
         | I think of it as the edge of the server side, ie the closest to
         | the user where the service operator still controls the data. An
         | edge function in a data center can hide information from
         | unauthorized users. An edge function in a home would have a
         | much harder time of pulling that off.
        
         | bigs wrote:
         | Edge just means running on servers near you (eg. the closest
         | AWS AZ) rather than the other side of the world. It's still
         | servers in data centres.
        
         | crabmusket wrote:
         | Back when the Internet of Things was a hot new idea, "edge" did
         | indeed refer to devices like phones and fridges.
         | 
         | These days "edge" more commonly refers to the "edge of the
         | cloud", i.e. still a datacenter, just not in us-east-1.
         | 
         | Serverless also does not mean no servers, it means no
         | sysadmins.
        
       | apitman wrote:
       | BunnySDK.net.http.serve(async (request: Request): Response |
       | Promise<Response> => {         return new Response("Hello
       | World");       });
       | 
       | I love that pretty much all the JS runtimes have settled on
       | `(Request): Response`[0], but I really wish they would
       | standardize starting the server as well. Would make writing
       | cross-runtime services easier.
       | 
       | [0]: https://blog.val.town/blog/the-api-we-forgot-to-name/
        
         | plopz wrote:
         | Thats new to me, is that an attempt to standardize similar to
         | PHP's psr-7?
        
         | laktek wrote:
         | I think the closest thing we got is the Default fetch export ht
         | tps://docs.deno.com/runtime/fundamentals/http_server/#defa...,
         | which Cloudflare Workers, Deno Deploy and Supabase Edge
         | Functions support.
        
           | throwitaway1123 wrote:
           | Node is the only major outlier. Bun supports this convention
           | as well: https://bun.sh/docs/api/http#export-default-syntax
        
         | diggan wrote:
         | I wonder where the pattern first comes from? I think I either
         | came across it in Express (JS) or Ring (Clojure) first but
         | surely it was first done somewhere else.
        
       | nehal3m wrote:
       | Script edging: Never finish building applications
        
         | seangrogg wrote:
         | Ah, so my side projects in a nutshell.
        
       | delanyoyoko wrote:
       | I guess this is the same as other offerings - Vercel Edge,
       | Cloudflare Workers/Pages?
        
       | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
       | I can vouch for Bunny. They are a fantastic company with
       | fantastic prices and fantastic reliability. I have used their
       | CDNs and all of their products for more than 4-5 years now.
        
       | laktek wrote:
       | Congrats on the launch! It's great to see more companies build
       | serverless offerings on top of Deno.
       | 
       | I lead Supabase Edge Functions product, a similar offering built
       | on top of Deno runtime too. We have open-sourced our runtime
       | (https://github.com/supabase/edge-runtime), and it's self-
       | hostable. It supports NPM, node built-ins, pluggable storage, and
       | web sockets. We also have a built-in API for AI inference
       | (https://supabase.com/blog/ai-inference-now-available-in-supa...)
       | 
       | Supabase Edge Runtime is easy to self-host (works great as a
       | multi-threaded JS web server). We love community contributions :)
       | Let us know if you would like to collaborate.
        
       | devmor wrote:
       | > We've all been there: your app gains popularity, and suddenly,
       | you're scrambling to add new servers.
       | 
       | Yeah, but the headache is usually from database, cache and other
       | shared resource servers.
       | 
       | Scaling HTTP has been very easy for most applications for the
       | last 15 years or so.
       | 
       | I have to confess I really don't see the appeal of edge workers
       | in general outside of specific applications where latency is of
       | high concern. Such applications do exist, of course, but this
       | kind of offering is treated so generally that I feel like I'm
       | either immune to the marketing or I'm missing something
       | important.
        
         | ruthmarx wrote:
         | > I have to confess I really don't see the appeal of edge
         | workers in general outside of specific applications where
         | latency is of high concern. Such applications do exist, of
         | course, but this kind of offering is treated so generally that
         | I feel like I'm either immune to the marketing or I'm missing
         | something important.
         | 
         | I agree, it mostly seems like a fad/gimmick.
        
       | fyzix wrote:
       | What's the file size limit for wasm modules? Do you get charged
       | for cpu while awaiting I/O? Do edge apps run before or after cdn
       | caching?
        
       | eqvinox wrote:
       | I'm getting old and grumpy, and my apps are edgier* than any of
       | this: they're native offline code.
       | 
       | * Pun intended.
        
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       (page generated 2024-11-07 23:00 UTC)