Victor Savio Fernandes

Usually working with JavaScript

[GitHub @github]

🆕 Copilot CLI just got a new terminal user interface.

Access your issues, pull requests, and gists right in your terminal.

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

Is it just me or Google search has been quite unstable lately?

[Sarah Drasner @sarah_edo]

@sama We are working on an agent model for the web-

The first step is WebMCP, if you haven't seen it yet, definitely check it out. This is just the beginning: https://t.co/qaz2GgC97D

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

@BatsouElef https://t.co/tA67o4OrMy

Recently launched this. Scores a perfect 100 lighthouse

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

Frontend take: users don’t care that your stack is “modern.” They care that the page loads fast, feels smooth, and doesn’t make them think too hard.

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

@IndiGo6E Thank you. DM sent

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

@IndiGo6E I'm unable to web check-in or allot seats via website. Constantly stuck on this page inspite of selecting pax. Is there a technical problem?

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

Join me to watch all of @VueMastery’s courses free through May 10-12 https://t.co/jECqJ062Fl via @vuemastery

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

@Prathkum It's still used on my website since ages, but I may trade it for something minimal ahead.

[Wes Bos @wesbos]

Tucked all the way at the bottom on the React 19 release notes is full support for web components! 🥳

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

@machahary @Mohitsharma202 Amazing idea!

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

Do you remember when you joined X? I do! #MyXAnniversary

[Lee Robinson @leerob]

So, @vercel reverted all edge rendering back to Node.js 😬

Wanted to correct the record here as it's something I've advocated for in the past, and share what I've learned since then.

Also, the "edge" naming has been a bit confusing, so let's clear that up here as well.

What is edge, anyway?

We have too many products with Edge 😅

First off, Vercel has an Edge Network. A request comes in for your site. The edge region can go grab some HTML or JS for your site and quickly return it. Great.

Then, sometimes, you have routing rules. When that request comes in, redirect it, proxy it somewhere else, or add headers before continuing (e.g. Middleware). You don't need to go all the way back to the origin. This is also great.

Sometimes those routing or configuration rules need to be read from a file. We have "Edge Config" which is like reading from a JSON file in every region. Again, still good.

Now, what about rendering my application with edge compute?

Not as great.

But Lee, you said...

Yeah, I gotta admit, this one fooled me. It sounded great at the start – running close to the visitor makes sense.

If I constrain my site to use this limited runtime, and make the tradeoff for access to the Node.js package ecosystem, I can (hypothetically) get better performance.

This hasn't worked for two reasons.

First, and most obvious, is that your compute needs to be close to your database. Most data is not globally replicated. So running compute in many regions, which all connect to a us-east database, made no sense.

I believe many folks understood this. But then, maybe this limited runtime was better even if I only run it close to my database?

Well, that was wrong too. We tested it extensively with @v0. Using the Node.js runtime with 1 vCPU (our "Standard" performance) option for Vercel Functions had faster startups 🤯

Are there other reasons for edge rendering?

If Node.js functions can be faster, especially with Node v20, what about cost?

I expected an edge compute pricing model, which is based on only paying for when your compute runs (and never I/O), would always be cheaper.

Turns out that was also wrong. It can be cheaper sometimes! But not for all workloads, so some nuance applied here.

Same story for security. I wanted edge compute to work, but customers kept telling me they wanted a private connection to other services (i.e. Vercel Secure Compute), or had concerns (or no interest) in doing global data replication (e.g. data sovereignty).

So now what?

It's a good lesson for me to be careful with naming / nuance going forward.

Also, networks have gotten really fast. We saw with @v0 that it was faster to do SSR + streaming with Node.js than edge rendering.

Now we're running @v0 with Partial Prerendering to see if this is better or worse (it's still experimental).

The summary of PPR is: user makes a request, the edge region starts streaming back the HTML for the fast initial visual, and then your compute still runs in us-east or wherever close to your data.

So far this has been about 50% faster time to first byte than SSR + streaming. Pretty amazing.

I'll be sharing more on Vercel Functions improvements soon, as well 🦀

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

I guess I'm a stackoverflow addict

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

@anushka_twt I don’t see it yet 😅

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

@TheDensonGeorge It's not about one person, it's about the team overall being faster. The actual reason is 3 players don't start from 0, they get a head start. https://t.co/d7QAR3kDYQ explains it

[Victor Savio Fernandes @vfdes]

@TheDensonGeorge Not that high up in list but def something I’d enjoy doing