4 ms·

I mean, it's not serverless. It's just somebody else's server.

deadcast 10y ago
Yeah this new marketing speak is really confusing sometimes. :/
RubenSandwich 10y ago
Serverless in this context means a simple stateless function connected to an API endpoint without having to setup your own server for the function to be connected to. I agree that the 'serverless' name can be confusing as ultimately it still uses a server, it's just abstracted away. Perhaps 'stateless API endpoint function' is a better name, but that doesn't roll off the tongue very well...
- sidlls 10y ago
  It's not stateless, either, in the same way it's not serverless (that is, it's somebody else's state). There are security and other issues that are important to consider when sending traffic over a network, and I find that calling this sort of thing "serverless" or "stateless" a bit misleading.
  - haimez 10y ago
    Added bonus: extremely difficult to reason about failure modes. Hope you didn't want to read any logs or measure the cold-start latency of your "function".
- aikah 10y ago
  > Serverless in this context means ... You know what is going to happen. Because it's a marketing buzzword it will be added to everything and anything and won't even mean what you think it means anymore. Just like "cloud" or "microservice". Then it will end up sounding bad anyway. Do you still market your products with "web 2.0" moniker ? That's right, you don't. I can't take people using the word "serverless" seriously to begin with.
  - eumoria 10y ago
    "serverless" now seems to mean just no server at YOUR site. it does not mean what I always read it as in peers/clients only
    - danneu 10y ago
      Seems that "serverless" just means AWS Lambda is involved. For example, http://apex.run/ http://apex.run/.
      - Jtsummers 10y ago
        Or Google Cloud Functions or Azure Functions. But AWS Lambda seems to be the one that gets all the coverage (was it first?).
        bdcravens 10y ago
        It was first among those 3 (GCF isn't even out of closed alpha at this point)
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      It means you're not managing a server OS. You're not even building a container. You're defining a function (as in, "fn foo(a, b): return a+b") which is called in somebody else's environment, and they have complete control over how your function is run - you're not dealing with autoscaling or whatever yourself.
razwall 10y ago
Yeah man, people should say what they mean. Like, I bought a new wireless phone the other day, and when I cracked it open, there were a bunch of wires inside! WTF?
brazzledazzle 10y ago
Sometimes you just have to limit the cynicism and accept that some terms are popular regardless of their literal accuracy or vagueness. Look at how the people who hated on "cloud" are perceived today. Shockingly some of them are still doing it. When those people were saying the cloud was someone else's hardware or servers they weren't really saying anything at all. I'm sure there's anecdotes about clueless PMs to prove the exception but no one actually thinks it's magic pixie dust underneath it all. They just don't talk about it because generally they don't need to think about it. And as much as it pains the cynic in me to say it, just because something is a marketing term doesn't mean it's bad. Even without a strict definition a single word that replaces several words, sentences or paragraphs is really useful for communication even if it makes it less approachable to people that are new to it. Could you imagine going to "function that runs on demand on someone else's server Conf 2016"? Or how unwieldy discussions during it would be? And yeah, there's probably a better single word out there for it but that's an uphill battle I'm glad I'm not fighting.

Yeah this new marketing speak is really confusing sometimes. :/

Serverless in this context means a simple stateless function connected to an API endpoint without having to setup your own server for the function to be connected to. I agree that the 'serverless' name can be confusing as ultimately it still uses a server, it's just abstracted away. Perhaps 'stateless API endpoint function' is a better name, but that doesn't roll off the tongue very well...

sidlls 10y ago
It's not stateless, either, in the same way it's not serverless (that is, it's somebody else's state). There are security and other issues that are important to consider when sending traffic over a network, and I find that calling this sort of thing "serverless" or "stateless" a bit misleading.
- haimez 10y ago
  Added bonus: extremely difficult to reason about failure modes. Hope you didn't want to read any logs or measure the cold-start latency of your "function".
aikah 10y ago
> Serverless in this context means ... You know what is going to happen. Because it's a marketing buzzword it will be added to everything and anything and won't even mean what you think it means anymore. Just like "cloud" or "microservice". Then it will end up sounding bad anyway. Do you still market your products with "web 2.0" moniker ? That's right, you don't. I can't take people using the word "serverless" seriously to begin with.
- eumoria 10y ago
  "serverless" now seems to mean just no server at YOUR site. it does not mean what I always read it as in peers/clients only
  - danneu 10y ago
    Seems that "serverless" just means AWS Lambda is involved. For example, http://apex.run/ http://apex.run/.
    - Jtsummers 10y ago
      Or Google Cloud Functions or Azure Functions. But AWS Lambda seems to be the one that gets all the coverage (was it first?).
      - bdcravens 10y ago
        It was first among those 3 (GCF isn't even out of closed alpha at this point)
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    It means you're not managing a server OS. You're not even building a container. You're defining a function (as in, "fn foo(a, b): return a+b") which is called in somebody else's environment, and they have complete control over how your function is run - you're not dealing with autoscaling or whatever yourself.

razwall 10y ago

Yeah man, people should say what they mean. Like, I bought a new wireless phone the other day, and when I cracked it open, there were a bunch of wires inside! WTF?

brazzledazzle 10y ago

Sometimes you just have to limit the cynicism and accept that some terms are popular regardless of their literal accuracy or vagueness. Look at how the people who hated on "cloud" are perceived today. Shockingly some of them are still doing it. When those people were saying the cloud was someone else's hardware or servers they weren't really saying anything at all. I'm sure there's anecdotes about clueless PMs to prove the exception but no one actually thinks it's magic pixie dust underneath it all. They just don't talk about it because generally they don't need to think about it. And as much as it pains the cynic in me to say it, just because something is a marketing term doesn't mean it's bad. Even without a strict definition a single word that replaces several words, sentences or paragraphs is really useful for communication even if it makes it less approachable to people that are new to it. Could you imagine going to "function that runs on demand on someone else's server Conf 2016"? Or how unwieldy discussions during it would be? And yeah, there's probably a better single word out there for it but that's an uphill battle I'm glad I'm not fighting.