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Comment by ssijak | Hacker News Reader

Can we just get full node runtime? Cloudflare is amazing, but without a full node runtime, we (and most of the usual apps) can't switch from things like Vercel/Netlify to Cloudflare.

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The unique architecture of our runtime is what enables most of our competitive advantages. It's what lets us run your application in hundreds of locations around the world while also charging less than competing serverless platforms. If we used a full Node runtime, we would need to charge a lot more money, or only run your app in a couple central locations, or both.

So, no, we can't just offer full Node.

However, we are always expanding our Node API compatibility: https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/runtime-apis/nodej...

(I'm the tech lead for Cloudflare Workers.)

Your comment would have been great without:

> So, no, we can't just offer full Node.

(Sounds a bit snotty)

How else would you write that? Would this be better?

"Thus, no, we can't just offer full Node."

Is it the use of "so" that is off limits?

Or is simply providing a concise conclusion inappropriate?

I don't see what part of that quote is "snotty".

Omitting it

No PR person would have included that line

I understand what you said. I did not expect full node runtime workers with all the other benefits that you listed that current workers have (global distribution, no cold starts, cost..). But it would be great to have a choice. I feel it would benefit both users and Cloudflare to support both (with different tradeoffs). For example, selecting "I want node runtime for this app workers," I would need to select the region they will run in, and that's it, those functions/workers would not be globally distributed, would probably cost more, but when you need full node runtime you need it and that is fine.

Yeah, in theory we could build a parallel service that's more Lambda-like and hosts apps in a more centralized way. It's certainly something we've thought about.

The challenge is, can we actually build that in a way that is significantly better than the existing competition? It's a crowded space. If we just build the same thing everyone else is doing, will it attract enough use to be worth the investment?

It sounds like you would be interested. What in your mind would potentially make our product more attractive than competitors here?

Even if it replicates the same capability for example Vercel has for lambdas/server functions I would still use it because I could remove one vendor for my apps and stay with Cloudflare for everything. I've noticed the same sentiment in random internet conversations. Obviously it will not work in every case and for everybody but for me it is not very hard to imagine having such functionality even if it just on par with current offering being enticing to a lot of people taking into account the complete Cloudflare offer and having it on the same platform. Most of those apps would need images, storage, firewall.. all the things cloudflare offers

I like that you answered this, but the request wasn't about workers but rather easing migration to Cloudflare. People want to migrate their entire business to Cloudflare. Provide dedicated servers and a container service, then the applications can migrate to workers. You can even produce an AI to do it for them.

I pick the 2nd. Few apps needs to run in the edge.

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