Re:AWS Lambda
by jameshart on Thursday November 13, 2014 @01:53PM
(#8603303)
Claiming that your code is a 'lambda function' makes it sound sexy, but.. isn't it really just a procedure? Unless I'm missing something and there is some higher-ordered capability for composing AWS lambda functions together in a way that permits the platform to perform lambda reductions or optimize resource allocation...
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Lambda function, not lambda function. Capitalization is key (the former is just a brand name).
Having reductions and composition would be really cool, but from what I could glean from the demos each function is containerized. Stateless and idempotent like lambda functions, but right now chaining more than one together requires an intermediary event.
I guess the term 'Lambda' here is taken to mean 'a function without side effects'. So no higher-order chainability, etc. afaik.
Except that it can have side effects, can't it - it can trigger services, cause stuff to be changed in a datastore. It doesn't have any local stateful storage, but it can make use of remote state. In that respect, how is it different from basically any web request processor?