Rita Kozlov

One, which was if you compare the number of people in the world that understand JavaScript versus people that understand VCL, like every time I would talk to a customer that was, you know, looking at moving to us, they would just be a little terrified because it's like, oh, well, Josh knows our VCL configuration and God forbid if Josh leaves or maybe Josh did leave.

One, which was if you compare the number of people in the world that understand JavaScript versus people that understand VCL, like every time I would talk to a customer that was, you know, looking at moving to us, they would just be a little terrified because it's like, oh, well, Josh knows our VCL configuration and God forbid if Josh leaves or maybe Josh did leave.

And then you're talking to this team that's like, Yeah, I don't know what this does and I'm terrified to touch it because everything's gonna go haywire. So that was one approach. And we knew from the beginning that we wanted something more programmatic than that because you can't do particularly complicated if statements or for loops or really express logic through that. And at the time,

And then you're talking to this team that's like, Yeah, I don't know what this does and I'm terrified to touch it because everything's gonna go haywire. So that was one approach. And we knew from the beginning that we wanted something more programmatic than that because you can't do particularly complicated if statements or for loops or really express logic through that. And at the time,

AWS had Lambdas and they had Lambda at Edge. And both of these are slightly different approaches too, but Lambda at Edge, it's interesting too, because they have a couple of different definitions of Edge too. So it wasn't running in all of their CloudFront locations and was still container-based. So Again, but more limited.

AWS had Lambdas and they had Lambda at Edge. And both of these are slightly different approaches too, but Lambda at Edge, it's interesting too, because they have a couple of different definitions of Edge too. So it wasn't running in all of their CloudFront locations and was still container-based. So Again, but more limited.

But again, for us, we're like, okay, well, we're not going to deploy containers because that's going to introduce a cold start. And for our use case, that undoes everything that we're trying to do. And so, yeah, you have that approach. And then, yeah, they kind of have this new approach now. That that's a bit more in the middle.

But again, for us, we're like, okay, well, we're not going to deploy containers because that's going to introduce a cold start. And for our use case, that undoes everything that we're trying to do. And so, yeah, you have that approach. And then, yeah, they kind of have this new approach now. That that's a bit more in the middle.

But to your point, yeah, I think when I played around with it last time, I was trying to do something even like return a custom response. And you really are limited to there's an assumption of you're making a request to origin. You're going to get a response from the origin and you can modify kind of the metadata on either side of that. But you can't go too far beyond that.

But to your point, yeah, I think when I played around with it last time, I was trying to do something even like return a custom response. And you really are limited to there's an assumption of you're making a request to origin. You're going to get a response from the origin and you can modify kind of the metadata on either side of that. But you can't go too far beyond that.

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question of what layer is the right layer for configuration and what layer is just your application logic. And an interesting thing for us, too, was if you actually look at that original use case of I want to modify my CDN, actually a lot of

Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question of what layer is the right layer for configuration and what layer is just your application logic. And an interesting thing for us, too, was if you actually look at that original use case of I want to modify my CDN, actually a lot of

teams that manage Cloudflare that are an infrastructure team that's used to CDN management, they're a bit like, don't give me the Turing complete stuff. I don't manage a code base in that same way. Give me a way to just manage rules.

teams that manage Cloudflare that are an infrastructure team that's used to CDN management, they're a bit like, don't give me the Turing complete stuff. I don't manage a code base in that same way. Give me a way to just manage rules.

And so over time, we've actually still continued to build out this really complex rules engine that is much more of a configuration language because that's what those people want. And yeah, it turned out that this layer was much more suitable for okay, well, actually, I just want to write my application in this way.

And so over time, we've actually still continued to build out this really complex rules engine that is much more of a configuration language because that's what those people want. And yeah, it turned out that this layer was much more suitable for okay, well, actually, I just want to write my application in this way.

And yeah, if you're a team that's, you know, an engineering team that's building features, then that's exactly how you want to write it. And you want to, you know, you have all of the development practices that you need in order to maintain this thing from, you know, source control to testing to, you know, the rest of it.

And yeah, if you're a team that's, you know, an engineering team that's building features, then that's exactly how you want to write it. And you want to, you know, you have all of the development practices that you need in order to maintain this thing from, you know, source control to testing to, you know, the rest of it.

You know, if you told me seven years ago that I'd be working on this for seven years, I think I would be a little surprised, but you know, it's in some senses really rewarding in that. you know, not to get into career advice and things like that. But I think an interesting thing about working on something like this for such a long time is you get to see your decisions play out.

You know, if you told me seven years ago that I'd be working on this for seven years, I think I would be a little surprised, but you know, it's in some senses really rewarding in that. you know, not to get into career advice and things like that. But I think an interesting thing about working on something like this for such a long time is you get to see your decisions play out.