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Is server less really as inevitable as the move to cloud? The extra moving parts don’t seem worth it for garden variety crud app so far imo.

• convolvatron 9y ago
  the extra moving parts aren't...but I think the point was to remove the existing moving parts (installing and maintaining a server instance). they just got it wrong. it would save everyone a lot of time and energy to not have to deal with server instances, so its likely a better model will come along. persistent storage in the presence of scaling and concurrency is a bit of thorn though.
  • bamboozled 9y ago
    That's the thing though, how hard is it to manage a VM in 2018? If you're using Terraform + modern config management tools I find it a breeze. I feel like this is a weak argument. If developers are unable to understand how something like Salt, Chef or Ansible works then I'd be surprised.
    • convolvatron 9y ago
      its not that people cant understand [salt, chef, ansible, terraform], its just a non-trivial amount of human effort, error, and upkeep just to say 'run my program'. kind of a shame that every shop has to have one or a few devops people on hand to do that. I guess it mostly stings when there is a critical openssl update, or something analogous. Despite the ideal of continuous integration and lightweight deployment - none of the shops I've worked at lately can make than happen in the 10 minutes its supposed to take.
      • bamboozled 9y ago
        With all due respect, I think it’s laziness. Most of the good soft ens I know spend the one - two hours or so it takes to get familiar with these systems.
    • com2kid 9y ago
      > If you're using Terraform + modern config management tools I find it a breeze. I feel like this is a weak argument. Writing a back-end for a mobile app right now. I need a few CRUD calls, but I also need stuff to stay in real-time sync between users. So far I've been able to sprinkle magic cloud fairy dust on things, solve auth, solve concurrency, and deployment is super easy. I originally thought about doing it on a VPS. Then I realized I'd have to deal with a bunch of issues that I Just Don't Want To Deal With Right Now, especially since I am trying to get an MVP out ASAP to validate my idea. The various cloud providers all offer nice, well tested, SDKs to do all of the nasty/boring work for me, and a single call on my command line deploys everything.
• toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Serverless fits a niche where a container or entire VM is overkill, or if you require an environment to run arbitrary code from users without the complexities managing such an environment entails. IMHO neither moving to the cloud or serverless entirely are inevitable unless you have unlimited resources and don’t mind contributing to Amazon’s margins, but both have their places when time is more valuable than infrastructure (although as you require additional capacity, it’s time to refactor your use of infrastructure moving down the abstraction layers). Disclaimer: my org has and intends to keep quite a bit of hardware on prem at our own datacenters, but also spends mid six figures on AWS monthly