
Serverless announcements from Google Cloud Next 2018 - steren
https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2018/07/bringing-the-best-of-serverless-to-you.html
======
kyrra
A big one that lots of people have been asking for is AppEngine Python 3
support, which is part of this announcement (3.7.0 support for AppEngine
standard).

[https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/concepts/python-
runt...](https://cloud.google.com/functions/docs/concepts/python-runtime)

~~~
grouseway
Is this for AppEngine standard or for Cloud Functions? I don't see any mention
of python 3 on the appengine page:
[https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/](https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/)

~~~
kyrra
Oh, I think you're right.

> Today we are announcing support for new second-generation App Engine
> standard runtimes such as Python 3.7

I'm still a bit confused what AppEngine 2nd gen is.

~~~
campers
2nd gen is the new standard runtimes using gVisor. I had read comments by
googlers here before that the first gen standard runtimes required a lot of
custom work on their end to run on the Google infrastructure which was why
they were a bit slow supporting new versions of php, java etc, while the new
gvisor based runtimes should be easier to roll out updates.

------
CoffeeDregs
I've got to say that I've found Google's swirling messaging around serverless-
as-a-service to be frustrating. Originally, it was App Engine, which was
great: upload a bit of Java/Python and off you went.

Then that suddenly seemed to get expensive
([https://readwrite.com/2011/09/02/google-app-engine-
pricing-a...](https://readwrite.com/2011/09/02/google-app-engine-pricing-
ange/)).

Then, about 3 years ago, App Engine seemed to be Docker-only App Engine
("Using the App Engine flexible environment means that your application
instances run within Docker containers on Google Compute Engine virtual
machines") with little mention of the original upload-some-code App Engine.

Now there are the App Engine "Standard Environment" which is in "Beta" and the
"Flexible Environment" which is GA.

Now it's old-is-new, upload-some-code App Engine by a different name. I think
it would have been much more clear if, having to maintain legacy App Engine
code+environments, they had released Google App Engine V2 and called "Flexible
Environment" the "Container Environment" (but that would have been confusing
with "Kubernetes Engine"...).

GCP's messaging seemed to have been much more coherent than AWS's but they
seem to be catching up. What's next? A Lightsail competitor?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Then, about 3 years ago, App Engine seemed to be Docker-only App Engine

No, when the Flexible Environments were introduced (the Docker-based ones),
Standard continued.

> Now there are the App Engine "Standard Environment" which is in "Beta" and
> the "Flexible Environment" which is GA.

Standard Environments are mostly GA, what is in beta appears to be the new
second-generation Standard Environments (Node.js 8 has been in beta, and now
the newly announced Python 3.7 and PHP 7.2 are in some nonpublic pre-GA
state.)

------
jarfil
"Severless"... I don't think it means what they're trying to make it mean.
"Server management"-less, or "dedicated server"-less, because true serverless
can only be some sort of p2p client-side-only infrastructure.

