Thread by @hhhypergrowth

enhances Workers w stateful objects. This opens a huge new use cases for app dev. blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-wo…. Blog post from @KentonVarda does a good job in showing its potential in laymen’s terms. This is pretty exciting from a developer stand point. /1

This is way more impactful than the “edge db” I was guessing (a stateful data store). This is stateful OBJECTS — instead of having a shared db across Worker instances, the Worker instance itself is what is shared. /2

Basically, shared objects can be maintaining state as a mini in-mem storage and logic pod. Think of it as a shared spreadsheet or doc. With this new feature, each doc is a separate Worker instance - you aren’t storing the data in a shared (multi-tenant) database or API layer. /3

This is flipping “serverless” on its head a bit. Serverless & microservices are about enabling and scaling “stateless” requests (each request is its own thing, nothing is remembered from request to request). /4

“Stateful” = the object remembers (persists) its data between requests. You can now have multiple requests all sharing and acting on the same pool of logic and data. This is the “old server-client” method but brought into the next century. /5

Add in the scale and portability and geolocationality you get from the edge. Services can spin up countless objects when and where they need them. (As usage demands.) /6

This is pretty cutting edge stuff from a development angle. But easy to see potential in any pockets of intercommunication between any number of users. /7

1: Video sharing/broadcasting where each shared feed is a Worker. Zoom (or edge-based competitor!) could spin up endless serverless instances to each serve its own feed, geolocated across edge. /8

2: Communal gaming or gambling where each match is its own Worker. Matches could be spun up and down as played, running nearest edge to the globally situated users. /9

3: Collaborative editing. Shared objects as separate Worker instances could be being edited in real-time in its own edge compute space, apart from all others. /10

Those are just a glimpse at the potential. Any Workers dev could spin up billons of shared stateful objects across the globe. This greatly changes how software developers approach edge compute. /11

Excited to see this play at from here, esp paired w the power of programmable Edge Networks. Edge compute is now its own thing w very diff feature set than core cloud infra, to enable some incredible next-gen capabilities.

For now, it is in private beta. /fin

P.S. I am gonna count this as a correct prediction yesterday of “edge database”... but it is all much more potent and exciting then I imagined. This is the future of global software development.