Serverless Kotlin via OpenFaaS, the most popular o...

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[s1m0nw1]

Serverless Kotlin via OpenFaaS, the most popular open-source FaaS framework:
https://kotlinexpertise.com/serverless-kotlin/

[nfrankel]

i’m sorry but using any kind of jvm based language on faas is plain crazy
either you pay to keep your jvm warm
or the first call is going to be dead slow
both just completely removes any benefit from faas

[nfrankel]

i love kotlin but this is plain nonsense

[s1m0nw1]

Keep cool Nicolas

[s1m0nw1]

You’ve probably not read this article because performance is mentioned as a concern. We’ve not been experiencing the issues you are mentioning and haven’t felt crazy so far.

[nfrankel]

performance is mentioned as a concern

it’s not a concern
it’s a red stop sign

We’ve not been experiencing the issues you are mentioning

if you’re using it as a toy experiment, nearly anything works in nearly every context - scala, clojure, etc.
but this is like advocating for microservices, monorepo or whatever hype and fancy trend is raging nowadays
faas definitely has use-cases
but is not compatible with jvm
either for price reason or performance reasons
if you stand by your reasoning, you should detail your costs and measure performances compared to other no-jvm alternatives e.g. javascript
and write about it
perhaps you’ll also realise it could be improved
nothing prevents you from transpiling kotlin to js and using the latter

[s1m0nw1]

Have you done any research about that? You seem to be very experienced based on your stated claims.

but is not compatible with jvm

Can you prove that? Or is that just your strong opinion?

[nfrankel]

the fact that jvm has a startup time is not an opinion

[nfrankel]

crazy...
it’s like asking me to prove that the earth is round

[nfrankel]

i mean, perhaps all the performance testing on the jvm have it wrong...
there should be no warmup
just fire the test and get the result

[nfrankel]

that you use kotlin in such context
and it works, it don’t deny
it works technically
but to advertise for it is a very bad idea
people are actually reading it
and will try it
and incur costs/performance problems

[nfrankel]

i don’t understand why you stand so firm...

[nfrankel]

here’s are posts i find when i google for “jvm cold start”:

• https://medium.com/thundra/mastering-java-cold-start-on-aws-lambda-volume-1-21c30ce378b7

[nfrankel]

• https://www.baeldung.com/java-jvm-warmup

[nfrankel]

The first request made to a Java web application is often substantially slower than the average response time during the lifetime of the process

[nfrankel]

“Cold start” in the serverless world means that serverless application is started and initialized to handle the request. In here, “serverless application” term represents both application and container itself where user code runs. As you guess, this initialization adds extra latency to the execution of the request since they need to be done before handling the request.

[s1m0nw1]

You know what’s crazy to me? When people claim to know it all. Just leave some space, be open - Things that don’t work for you, might work for others. Cold starts are a real challenge but you can still get around it. It’s not a show stopper for everybody. My intentions are clearly stated in the article. You will get better performance with other platforms and I don’t think there’s anything wrong about it.

[nfrankel]

Cold starts are a real challenge but you can still get around it

yes, if you pay the cost to keep it warm
or don’t need faas in the first place

[hhariri]

Folks, let’s please try and keep discussions civil and focus on the topic without.

[nfrankel]

hey @hhariri
if by civil you mean not heartily disagreeing when i see something that is a complete nonsense, i must admit i’m not 😉
otherwise, i believe i fit the definition
my main point is the jvm and faas are a very bad association
i’ve added references
and the answer is “it works on my machine!” or something akin to that...

[hhariri]

@nfrankel I think using words such as nonsense in the way it is used here is inappropriate. I believe there are many ways to make a point without the need for this kind of tone.