Cloud as the new mainframe: why the cloud hype does not reflect the dev reality

The cloud is the new mainframe, slowing developers with tedious feedback loops. Learn how local emulation brings back the speed and control of offline development.

#1about 1 minute

Why modern cloud development feels like using a mainframe

The perceived flexibility of the cloud contrasts with the rigid, centralized developer experience that resembles old mainframe systems.

#2about 3 minutes

The slow and tedious feedback loop in cloud development

Developing against remote cloud services introduces long waits for packaging, uploading, and deploying every code change, killing developer productivity.

#3about 2 minutes

Debugging challenges in the cloud's black box environment

The inability to use local debuggers on remote cloud infrastructure forces developers to rely on slow, iterative log-based debugging.

#4about 4 minutes

The historical pendulum of centralization vs decentralization

Technology cycles swing between centralized models like mainframes and the cloud, and decentralized models like local workstations and the web.

#5about 2 minutes

Managing the high cost of ephemeral development environments

Proliferating cloud environments for feature branches and CI builds leads to significant wasted spend when they are not properly managed.

#6about 6 minutes

Improving the inner dev loop with local emulation

Local emulation platforms provide a high-fidelity cloud environment on a developer's machine, solving issues of efficiency, debuggability, and resource conflicts.

#7about 3 minutes

Demo of deploying a serverless app with LocalStack

A live demonstration shows how to deploy and test a multi-service AWS application (API Gateway, Lambda, SQS) entirely on a local machine.

#8about 2 minutes

Q&A on multi-cloud support and advanced collaboration features

The discussion covers the future roadmap for supporting other cloud providers like Azure and advanced features like state sharing for team collaboration.