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Can we stop calling everything "serverless"? It's a stupid name. I assume it means peer-to-peer here right?

by est 8y ago

timlyo 8y ago
It's serverless in that there is no specific server running it. The website is distributed across Ipfs and the chat is peer-to-peer.
- eeZah7Ux 8y ago
  It's still a stupid name.
  - some_account 8y ago
    It's used now as official term on AWS and probably other clouds as well. Its the new hot thing since you don't need to provision any servers or infrastructure. All you do is write code and deploy it to a cloud platform. And it's much much cheaper as well. So yeah it's a dumb term but it's here to stay. :)
    - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
      Cheaper? I have no idea what running a particular app would cost. The ridiculously fine grained way in which the big IaaS providers charge for their services is a major reason why I'm avoiding them whenever I can. It's just too risky, too complex and too brittle. Any tiny change can have huge cost implications.
      - 0x6c6f6c 8y ago
        From what I've read if you had a single instance of a lambda function running 24/7 it's still cheaper than the micro EC2 instance. You have warm-up time on initial requests if the functions been idle for awhile, but otherwise the response time is fairly quick <25ms and it scales up with your traffic directly. It's cheap for a web application served primarily from CDN with serverless for backend logic and easy entry to using other AWS services with secure access per function. Starting a web app through serverless would be insanely cheap barrier to entry with serverless considering you only pay for processing time. Whether this works well depends largely on the architecture of the application and if it's done right. You can absolutely have a serverless application that would be much better served with elastic beanstalk or ECS perhaps but to say serverless is useless or too expensive all around is not true.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  I don't know man, when we say "defenseless", we mean it has no defense. "Useless", it has no use. We don't mean "it has so many uses that you can't really pick one". That would be "useful", I guess, which is pretty much the opposite.
  - codesnik 8y ago
    serverful, then?
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      Yes, or just nothing, as that's the default anyway.
  - FLUX-YOU 8y ago
    'Distributed' just isn't exciting any more
  - jarfil 8y ago
    "Priceless" has so much price that you can't pick up one.
    - rounce 8y ago
      It means that the price cannot be meaningfully quantified en masse, the price is set at the moment of purchase. Art is a good example of this as it generally has no immediate utility, and even it cultural significance is created less by the piece itself, but rather by it's philosophical foundation which is not part of the purchase (nor even ownable). The Mona Lisa may be 'priceless', but all the money in the world is just a lot of money.
  - derefr 8y ago
    People effectively map “server” to mean “centralization botteneck” or “Single Point Of Failure” these days. In both of those senses, this system is “serverless.”
    - 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
k__ 8y ago
This is the first time I read serverless in an appropriate context and still there are people complaining...
pasta 8y ago
No it doesn't mean peer-to-peer here. It means that there is no one server but a lot and in fact the 'server' is abstracted away from the developer so he sees no server (serverless). I think Wikipedia has a nice explanation of the term: Serverless computing is a cloud-computing execution model in which the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources. Pricing is based on the actual amount of resources consumed by an application, rather than on pre-purchased units of capacity.[1] It is a form of utility computing. Serverless computing still requires servers, hence it's a misnomer.[1] The name "serverless computing" is used because the server management and capacity planning decisions are completely hidden from the developer or operator. Serverless code can be used in conjunction with code deployed in traditional styles, such as microservices. Alternatively, applications can be written to be purely serverless and use no provisioned servers at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing
- tlrobinson 8y ago
  So... a PaaS?
  - jadbox 8y ago
    yep, just reversed now: SaaP... Serverless as a Platform
david4096 8y ago
Yes, I second this.

Can we stop calling everything "serverless"? It's a stupid name. I assume it means peer-to-peer here right?

by est 8y ago

Can we stop calling everything "serverless"? It's a stupid name. I assume it means peer-to-peer here right?

It's serverless in that there is no specific server running it. The website is distributed across Ipfs and the chat is peer-to-peer.

eeZah7Ux 8y ago
It's still a stupid name.
- some_account 8y ago
  It's used now as official term on AWS and probably other clouds as well. Its the new hot thing since you don't need to provision any servers or infrastructure. All you do is write code and deploy it to a cloud platform. And it's much much cheaper as well. So yeah it's a dumb term but it's here to stay. :)
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    Cheaper? I have no idea what running a particular app would cost. The ridiculously fine grained way in which the big IaaS providers charge for their services is a major reason why I'm avoiding them whenever I can. It's just too risky, too complex and too brittle. Any tiny change can have huge cost implications.
    - 0x6c6f6c 8y ago
      From what I've read if you had a single instance of a lambda function running 24/7 it's still cheaper than the micro EC2 instance. You have warm-up time on initial requests if the functions been idle for awhile, but otherwise the response time is fairly quick <25ms and it scales up with your traffic directly. It's cheap for a web application served primarily from CDN with serverless for backend logic and easy entry to using other AWS services with secure access per function. Starting a web app through serverless would be insanely cheap barrier to entry with serverless considering you only pay for processing time. Whether this works well depends largely on the architecture of the application and if it's done right. You can absolutely have a serverless application that would be much better served with elastic beanstalk or ECS perhaps but to say serverless is useless or too expensive all around is not true.
StavrosK 8y ago
I don't know man, when we say "defenseless", we mean it has no defense. "Useless", it has no use. We don't mean "it has so many uses that you can't really pick one". That would be "useful", I guess, which is pretty much the opposite.
- codesnik 8y ago
  serverful, then?
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    Yes, or just nothing, as that's the default anyway.
- FLUX-YOU 8y ago
  'Distributed' just isn't exciting any more
- jarfil 8y ago
  "Priceless" has so much price that you can't pick up one.
  - rounce 8y ago
    It means that the price cannot be meaningfully quantified en masse, the price is set at the moment of purchase. Art is a good example of this as it generally has no immediate utility, and even it cultural significance is created less by the piece itself, but rather by it's philosophical foundation which is not part of the purchase (nor even ownable). The Mona Lisa may be 'priceless', but all the money in the world is just a lot of money.
- derefr 8y ago
  People effectively map “server” to mean “centralization botteneck” or “Single Point Of Failure” these days. In both of those senses, this system is “serverless.”
  - 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

k__ 8y ago

This is the first time I read serverless in an appropriate context and still there are people complaining...

pasta 8y ago

No it doesn't mean peer-to-peer here. It means that there is no one server but a lot and in fact the 'server' is abstracted away from the developer so he sees no server (serverless). I think Wikipedia has a nice explanation of the term: Serverless computing is a cloud-computing execution model in which the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation of machine resources. Pricing is based on the actual amount of resources consumed by an application, rather than on pre-purchased units of capacity.[1] It is a form of utility computing. Serverless computing still requires servers, hence it's a misnomer.[1] The name "serverless computing" is used because the server management and capacity planning decisions are completely hidden from the developer or operator. Serverless code can be used in conjunction with code deployed in traditional styles, such as microservices. Alternatively, applications can be written to be purely serverless and use no provisioned servers at all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing

tlrobinson 8y ago
So... a PaaS?
- jadbox 8y ago
  yep, just reversed now: SaaP... Serverless as a Platform

david4096 8y ago

Yes, I second this.