> The future of compute is fine-grained. Cloudflare Workers is all about fine-grained compute, that is, splitting compute into small chunks -- a single HTTP request, rather than a single server instance. This is what allows us to run every customer's code (no matter how little traffic they get) in hundreds of locations around the world, at a price accessible to everyone.
I don't think this holds any truth at all.
Cloudflare Workers were designed to be so "fine-grained" because their whole rationale is to have very small compute steps at each request to do a very small touch-up at each request/response, With negligible or tolerable performance impact.
This is not a major paradigm change. It's a request handler placed on edge servers to do a minor touch up without the client noticing. Conceptually they are the same as a plain old Controller from Spring or Express. They just have tighter constraints because they run on resource-constrained hardware and handle performance-constrained requests. Other than this, they are a plain old request handler.
> Sure, that makes sense, but you can write a compiler in languages that don't require it themselves.
I don't follow your rationale. With C the developer manages heap memory by basically calling malloc and free.
This means that once you have the memory model set, all you need to do to roll your compiler is to implement the interface.
A language that "don't require it themselves" is a language which provides only high level constructs and dumps all the memory management logic to the compiler/runtime, from object allocation/deallocation to lifetime management.
How is that simpler to pull off by a compiler writer?
> Honestly, I think I'd prefer pseudocode that I can read to understand the idea and then work in my language of choice rather than C.
What stops you from understanding the idea by reading C? It's a tried-and-true language whose K&R version fits entirely in an easy to read ~180pg book which has real world applications, unlike pseudocode.
> Even with the best free health care and enormous social safety nets, losing your health to the point that you can't work would be a lifestyle change for anyone anywhere due to lost income.
OP mentioned "health-relared expenses", which is not the same as losing your income.
I'm sure that most people in the world will struggle to make ends meet if they find themselves unemployed, even if they are perfectly healthy.
> Easier said than done, and I find this is bad advice. You don't really know how much runway you have in front of you and in a situation where you may have very limited income, your best bet is to save as much as possible. Also you will have unforeseen health-related expenses as you get old. Following this logic incurs a risk of make yourself depend on your kids or your family members before you die.
Sadly, this sounds like a terribly US-centric take. In most western nations a health scare does not bring in a significant risk of financial distress, unless it's serious enough you find yourself out of a job for an extended period of time.
I don't think this holds any truth at all.
Cloudflare Workers were designed to be so "fine-grained" because their whole rationale is to have very small compute steps at each request to do a very small touch-up at each request/response, With negligible or tolerable performance impact.
This is not a major paradigm change. It's a request handler placed on edge servers to do a minor touch up without the client noticing. Conceptually they are the same as a plain old Controller from Spring or Express. They just have tighter constraints because they run on resource-constrained hardware and handle performance-constrained requests. Other than this, they are a plain old request handler.