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Comment by chrisweekly | Hacker News Reader

This is really cool. Webapps are basically programs that are executed across the network; having fine-grained control over what happens at each layer (client, client service worker, edge nodes, proxy server, origin server) means more choices and complexity, but also so much more power.

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The question I would ask is: once you have the ability to run code and store data on the network itself (which Cloudflare effectively is), why do you need an origin at all?

I could be understanding the crux of your question wrong but I believe the point the article and technology makes over and over is that it offloads nearly all of the stress and communication off of the backend and instead replaces it with a Worker KV which converts into becoming one static call and then everything is handled within the Worker. The applications seemed vast and only limited by creativity, as well.

One write per second, per key plus eventually consistent does limit the functionality a bit.

You're right for some use cases though.

Where are you getting 1 write per second from?

1 write per second per key. It's from the Limits and Pricing section of the technical post: https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-with-workers-kv/

Thanks, that begins to answer some of my questions/concerns.

You work for Cloudflare so that's a fun question but realistically there are still plenty of limitations. The script size, number of routes, KV consistency, write limits, and simple get/put API, etc.

It can work for simple apps but there's a long way to go before any serious enterprise system will be hosted entirely on a FaaS system like Workers.

If you’re having trouble with script size and route limitations, would love to chat. We’re working on providing more flexibility in that realm. rita at cloudflare.

> why do you need an origin at all?

At the point that CF replaces the origin, it is the origin.

The confusion in your query is the idea that "origin" is a rigid, fixed concept rather than flexible.

Reduncy, avoid vendor lockdown, Worker KV is amazing. On the billion scale it is expensive.

Accidentally serverless.

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