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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 connect

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.

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.