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Is anyone else slightly peeved by the popularity of this misnomer? If you are paying for servers, your app isn't serverless. Real serverless to me means decent

• superplussed 9y ago
  It actually has lead to confusion before when I assumed that someone I was talking to knew what this usage of "serverless" meant. And it was only 15 minutes of talking that we realized our conversation had wildly diverged and neither side knew it.
• perilunar 9y ago
  Not just peeved, but confused. "With serverless computing, your application still runs on servers" So it's not serverless? Why are you calling it serverless?
  • virtualized 9y ago
    Because server has become a synonym for "Ubuntu pet machine that developers SSH into to paste random commands from Stack Overflow". People who do that are the target audience of "serverless".
    • IanCal 9y ago
      Also people with different requirements. I like being able to drop a load of files on s3 and have a few hundred processes start automatically, run and store the results elsewhere without having to ever worry about disk space or managing a fleet of servers which I want running for no more than a couple of minutes.
• eriknstr 9y ago
  The very first time I heard "serverless" I thought P2P, but even though I agree somewhat with what you said, think of it as serverless because you don't have to manage the servers yourself.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• richmarr 9y ago
  Serverless refers to your workflow & division of responsibility, not the literal stack. Personally I think there are enough things to be peeved about in the world without adding this.
• melvinram 9y ago
  It's called serverless because, for all intents and purposes, you don't know or control: * how many real or virtual servers are running your code. * how the servers were provisioned or setup. * how to access the servers (either via SSH or programmatically), either than through predefined APIs. * what happens when the servers break. * what causes the servers to disappear. * etc. The "server" concept has been abstracted out of the equation and you're no longer required to think in terms of servers. (there is one exception: RAM usage is still something you need to predict for AWS Lambda.) Instead, you're thinking in terms of limitations and usage of the service. With the above said, serverless has a bit of journey to make. The toolchain is growing and the workflow of local development, testing and deployment is still a work in progress. I feel like it's a great time to jump in because there is a lot of exciting work to do and a good foundation to build on top of.
  • virtualized 9y ago
    These were already the promises of "the Cloud" until everyone started calling their Raspberry Pis at home a "cloud". Now the same thing has got another stupid name: Serverless. I wonder what the same stuff will be called two years from now.
    • collyw 9y ago
      It was "web based" before that.
    • melvinram 9y ago
      Yes, services (such as AWS S3) that could be considered serverless have existed for some time now. What has changed is that the suite of services now exist to fully enable an application to be (almost) completely serverless. Similar to micro-services, people will overuse the word and it will seem like a fad. IMO, it's more than a fad. Once the toolchain is mature, it will become the default way of building applications.
      • ShabbosGoy 9y ago
        S3 is not serverless. Just because the implementation details (i.e. how servers are provisioned) are obscured from the end user doesn't make serverless. Web 3.0 is truly serverless because your application lives on a decentralized p2p cloud. Ethereum/Swarm(or IPFS)/Whisper is an example of a serverless p2p stack. You may as well call the service they're selling "managed", because that's what it is.
• kagx 9y ago
  Serverless term is a little bit confusing at the beginning, but it is the same thing as saying that WiFi is wireless.
  • cpach 9y ago
    A mesh network can be wireless ;-)
  • virtualized 9y ago
    WiFi can do without a wire where it matters. A server cannot do anything without being a server.
• inopinatus 9y ago
  Not peeved at all. Actually I find the persnickety language-lawyering far more irksome. It is even specifically incorrect to claim that AWS lambda functions always run on servers; they have at least three distinct execution environments, one of which is IoT devices via AWS Greengrass another being inside the Cloudfront CDN. It's also a stretch to suggest that the primary execution environment for AWS Lambda is a server device; that is not AFAIK specified anywhere. So, although the term itself may annoy you, the counter-claim that "it must be servers" is a demonstrably false assumption.
• honestoHeminway 9y ago
  Yes, i expected it to be something akin to a peer 2 peer client, where one user hosts it for another. Stopped reading when AWS showed up.
• gluczywo 9y ago
  It's not only a misnomer but the term is not needed. We've had SOA, web services, microservices, now serverless. I'm not saying it's all hype. It's rather a steady, lasting a few decades, transition towards outsourcing by encapsulating complexity into services. For me we've just arrived to the point where web services are mature enough so they can be consumed directly from the browser.
• developer2 9y ago
  Amazon goes to the extent to fully explain in the very first two sentences: "Serverless computing allows you to build and run applications and services without thinking about servers. With serverless computing, your application still runs on servers, but all the server management is done by AWS." "Serverless" had no previous meaning - it's not like Amazon bastardized an existing term. The word will ultimately be defined once people expect it to mean something specific. Personally I like Amazon's use of the term here. A recent similar example: the word "performant". The number of stubborn people who screamed "performant isn't a word!" was ridiculous. Everyone understands the intention behind the word "performant" without needing to have it explained to them. The introduction and wide adoption of a word is exactly how new words are folded into language. Language is fluid! Language has never been static and inflexible, and pouting because we have extended the dictionary over and over again for thousands of years is frivolous.
• amelius 9y ago
  Agreed. When I first read the term, I thought it was about some P2P service. Why not call it "hosted" or "virtually-hosted" instead?
• thinkMOAR 9y ago
  I'm agreeing with you, and their own text does too I quote: "Serverless computing allows you to build and run applications and services without thinking about servers." Serverless clearly is not serverless. down voted edit: LOL
• Herald_MJ 9y ago
  No, I'm not peeved by the "misnomer". What is getting a bit annoying is every conversation about serverless being dominated by snarky comments about there being no such thing. As software professionals, we all know there is a server involved in responding to requests for our applications. But 'serverless' does accurately describe services like AWS Lambda, because the experience of development is such that you don't really have to think about servers, along with all the complexity of provisioning, configuring and managing them. TL;DR: It's just a name. Get over it.
  • le-mark 9y ago
    Agreed, it is very annoying, maybe 'serverless' isn't the best name, but 'adminless' is no better. All the banal comments about the name have really impeded discussion about this topic. I personally am angered at the 'everyone should be a sys admin' culture we've come into as a profession, it completely trivializes the role of sys admins who are critical to any product/company. Good sys admins bring a lot to the table, just like experienced DBAs. Edit; wow either everyone really hates sys admins and dba's or prefer "adminless", any down voters care to explain? In truth, I don't think the name 'serverless' will stick in the long term, there is just too much animosity for it. The useage here by AWS is the first time I've seen it in a couple of months. Anecdata, but I think most would admit it's not very common.
    • mgkimsal 9y ago
      As with many positions, there's a middle ground. I don't expect people to be able to dive in deep in to the innards of MSSQL and understand all the nuance between types of indexes and how different hardware choices can impact said index types. However, when working with "sr software engineers" who are responsible for SQL, I do expect someone to be able to set up a local test database and create some tables with sample data to demonstrate an idea (in whatever tech they choose). I would argue that "sys admins" - in the form of dedicated personnel - are not "critical to an product/company". I know plenty of smaller companies who are successfully bringing in profits, making payroll, etc, but do not have any sysadmins employed. At some point, they will need those skills (and probably stronger DB skills) but these aren't always critical to every project/company/org. Perfect is the enemy of the good. EDIT: middle ground.
• oneplane 9y ago
  I am. But this is just another 'shiny new thing'. It's not that it doesn't have it's place or function, but it's not as 'special' as it's presented as either. Back when you delivered your stack of punchcards, you were practically serverless too. You didn't know how it was going to be loaded, who would do it, where the machine would be, of how to get in to do things yourself. It's just code in, results out. This practically fits in the same boat as docker...
• tabeth 9y ago
  It's interesting how most of the responses to this post agree that "serverless" isn't literally what's happening but agree to that name and say to get over it. It's akin to someone saying it's "free" because you don't have to think about the money, e.g. you pay with a credit card. Perhaps the name it should be called is adminless or backend as a service. In any case, there's probably not much one can do about the name at this point.
  • voidr 9y ago
    Reminds me of the following meme: #define TRUE FALSE //Happy debugging
  • mgkimsal 9y ago
    > Perhaps the name it should be called is adminless or backend as a service What's odd is that we already have "infrastructure as a service", which is generally what this is. An entire infrastructure to run your code, without having to set it up (although you still need to configure logging to get useful data in most situations, it seems).
• StevePerkins 9y ago
  I hear you, but to me this is like people getting upset over hoverboards ("But they don't hover!!!"). True, but it's convenient shorthand and pretty much everyone understands what is really meant.
• Futurebot 9y ago
  "Just-in-time server" would have been much more descriptive and accurate as a term.