edge computing is wild to me. why would you create so many new problems for yourself just to get a slightly faster latency? that’s asking for trouble IMO

@kasdeya A lot of it comes down to the fact centralized systems don’t really scale. When your system is really, really large, the complexity imposed by edge compute isn’t actually terribly much.

I think people massively underestimate how important it is to reduce conceptual complexity in any kind of system (software or otherwise)

and by “conceptual complexity” I mean “how many concepts someone needs to keep in mind in order to {work on or troubleshoot} the system”. so that means that (relatively) non-leaky abstractions are okay but leaky abstractions aren’t

@kaylie huh - that really sucks. what I want to say is “they shouldn’t have made such a complex system in the first place - they should have simplified it” but that might be naïve. like maybe some systems are just inherently that complex and there’s nothing to be done about it

@kasdeya yeah like there is a scale of operations at which it can be a useful tool in the belt, but like for even the largest companies we've been at it was pretty overkill

like just set up some regional caches if you need them and call it a day, the percentage of cases where edge architectures make sense are a rounding error