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The main issue is that "Serverless" is a really crappy name given there are actually servers involved. Although confusing/misleading names might be good at get

The main issue is that "Serverless" is a really crappy name given there are actually servers involved. Although confusing/misleading names might be good at getting attention because they prompt people to dig deeper to figure out what they mean.

tptacek 8y ago
The name "serverless" is fine. Everything is ultimately run on servers of some sort; the point of the name is that consumers don't manage (or really in many cases even need to be aware of) those servers in a serverless model like AWS Lambda.
- ta1234567890 8y ago
  The issue is that, on a first impression, "serverless" sounds a lot more like p2p than "developers/admins don't need to worry about managing the servers".
  - movedx 8y ago
    I disagree. I believe if you're thinking about how you want to deploy an application, you can say, "We want to be serverless in that regard: we want to manage as little as possible." It's on par with saying, "We want to be hardwareless in what we manage" and so you hire IBM, with a managed services contract, to deliver, install, maintain, and so on, your office IT equipment. You're "hardwareless" from the management perspective, the cost center perspective, in that you don't own it, manage it, or maintain it, you simply use it. I'll concede it's a bit of a mind bending term, though. You have to think of it from the right angle and in the right way (which means taking off your engineer hat to a degree.)
    - tptacek 8y ago
      It's not just a question of managing as little as possible; it's also a question of the unit in which you want to scale and be invoiced (by invocation or by some broad unit of capacity).
      - movedx 8y ago
        I want to be invoiced as little as possible and as efficiently as possible. If I have a choice, when developing an MVP for something I have no idea the market wants, I want to be billed as little as possible, not every hour whether I use the kitchen sink or not.
        ta1234567890 8y ago
        This whole thread makes the point by itself. It shows how it pretty much requires at least a small conversation to understand what the term "serverless" means. This implies it is not self-explanatory at all, hence confusing and misleading.
        pvg 8y ago
        requires at least a small conversation I'm not super fond of the term myself but the only cases in which it seems to 'require a small conversation' is when people who know exactly what it means complain about how it doesn't mean what they think it should mean.
        ta1234567890 8y ago
        Or when the people who don't know what it means need to ask other people what serverless actually means.
        pvg 8y ago
        No doubt. Just like every other unfamiliar term.
        movedx 8y ago
        This applies to virtually every technology in existence. I've never had to explain what Serverless means to another engineer, only people, like management, who tend to be non-technical :)

tptacek 8y ago

The name "serverless" is fine. Everything is ultimately run on servers of some sort; the point of the name is that consumers don't manage (or really in many cases even need to be aware of) those servers in a serverless model like AWS Lambda.

ta1234567890 8y ago
The issue is that, on a first impression, "serverless" sounds a lot more like p2p than "developers/admins don't need to worry about managing the servers".
- movedx 8y ago
  I disagree. I believe if you're thinking about how you want to deploy an application, you can say, "We want to be serverless in that regard: we want to manage as little as possible." It's on par with saying, "We want to be hardwareless in what we manage" and so you hire IBM, with a managed services contract, to deliver, install, maintain, and so on, your office IT equipment. You're "hardwareless" from the management perspective, the cost center perspective, in that you don't own it, manage it, or maintain it, you simply use it. I'll concede it's a bit of a mind bending term, though. You have to think of it from the right angle and in the right way (which means taking off your engineer hat to a degree.)
  - tptacek 8y ago
    It's not just a question of managing as little as possible; it's also a question of the unit in which you want to scale and be invoiced (by invocation or by some broad unit of capacity).
    - movedx 8y ago
      I want to be invoiced as little as possible and as efficiently as possible. If I have a choice, when developing an MVP for something I have no idea the market wants, I want to be billed as little as possible, not every hour whether I use the kitchen sink or not.
      - ta1234567890 8y ago
        This whole thread makes the point by itself. It shows how it pretty much requires at least a small conversation to understand what the term "serverless" means. This implies it is not self-explanatory at all, hence confusing and misleading.
        pvg 8y ago
        requires at least a small conversation I'm not super fond of the term myself but the only cases in which it seems to 'require a small conversation' is when people who know exactly what it means complain about how it doesn't mean what they think it should mean.
        ta1234567890 8y ago
        Or when the people who don't know what it means need to ask other people what serverless actually means.
        pvg 8y ago
        No doubt. Just like every other unfamiliar term.
        movedx 8y ago
        This applies to virtually every technology in existence. I've never had to explain what Serverless means to another engineer, only people, like management, who tend to be non-technical :)