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> Serverless computing is in a much earlier stage of adoption, with nearly half of developers failing to clearly understand what it is. I've seen this called F

> Serverless computing is in a much earlier stage of adoption, with nearly half of developers failing to clearly understand what it is. I've seen this called Function as a Service and honestly I think using that term instead of Serverless would go a long way to fixing this issue because 1) it clearly communicates what it is 2) there's not actually such thing as serverless since the functions are still running on servers. It's a made up term that isn't grounded in reality. It's not serverless any more than a Heroku Dyno is Serverless. The first time I heard "serverless" I assumed it was a totally in-browser application.

styfle 8y ago
Also it fits in nicely with the other naming conventions such as the following: - Software as a Service (SaaS) - a product such as GitHub or Slack - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - VM or LB as you find in Azure or AWS or Digital Ocean - Platform as a Service (PaaS) - sometimes called Container as a Service as you find in Heroku or Zeit Now - Function as as Service (FaaS) - a single function as you find in Lambda
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  Technically CaaS could be IaaS, if you're just using containers as lightweight VM substitutes. Practically CaaS tends to be PaaS, because the hosting service is also providing a platform such as Kubernetes.
- candiodari 8y ago
  What's the practical difference between FaaS and the old style mod_php, mod_perl, mod_python and friends ?
  - styfle 8y ago
    I think the difference is that you don’t know if the server is running Apache or nginx or IIS because it’s abstracted away. The only interface is the input into the function and the output it returns.
frou_dh 8y ago
"/cgi-bin/ Rides Again" was left on the cutting-room floor.
- evilmushroom 8y ago
  I see people getting excited about something new "past REST"... which by that what they mean is RPC.
moduspwnens14 8y ago
> I've seen this called Function as a Service and honestly I think using that term instead of Serverless would go a long way to fixing this issue But "Functions as a Service" doesn't cover what it is, though. The following AWS services are "serverless" but would not be "function as a service:" * S3 * API Gateway * SQS * SNS * Cognito * DynamoDB * CloudWatch (logs and metrics) * Step Functions In all cases, you are not provisioning or managing servers. Scaling is linear and costs are linear based on how much you use them, and typically based on what's actually being used (bytes stored, requests made, etc.) and not per-node. Because they're all hugely multi-tenant, they also cost almost nothing to use at low scale. "Functions as a service" covers serverless compute, but it doesn't cover the huge architectural difference (from the developer's perspective) between the services above and rolling your own (for example) S3.
- brightball 8y ago
  All of those would fall under IaaS/PaaS. If we're qualifying anything on a server that developers don't have to manage themselves as serverless than anything with an API becomes serverless...despite all of them actually running on servers.
  - moduspwnens14 8y ago
    OK. I guess to me categorizing those things in the same bucket as EC2 or Salesforce is missing a pretty fundamental architectural difference and benefit. I'm not claiming "serverless" is an ideal term, but I haven't seen the case made for anything better.
- manigandham 8y ago
  Those are just managed services, as in managed versions of I/P/F/S-aaS. "Serverless" can be applied to every SaaS product ever made and is just an all-around meaningless and dumb-sounding term.
  - dastbe 8y ago
    (aws employee) The distinction I've heard and make (regardless of serverless being the right term) is that these infrastructure services expose their control plane and data plane without tying you to the concept of a particular machine. Compare this to all publicly available forms of RDS where I still have to think in terms of machines for scaling and management.
hinkley 8y ago
I'd like to hear from the Erlang camp. It amuses me to think about what they must think of us darn kids taking their ideas and calling them something else. What's really the difference between FaaS and Erlang style message passing?
choward 8y ago
> The first time I heard "serverless" I assumed it was a totally in-browser application. So the term "serverless" made you think there was no server involved? What could have possibly made you think that? "Serverless" is up there with "cloud" for the dumbest most overused words in technology right now.
- martin-adams 8y ago
  BitTorrent and Napster is what made me think that
  - dhimes 8y ago
    I think he was being sarcastic...
    - choward 8y ago
      I was. I refuse to use "/s" though.
duxup 8y ago
I feel like I know more after just reading your post.

styfle 8y ago

Also it fits in nicely with the other naming conventions such as the following: - Software as a Service (SaaS) - a product such as GitHub or Slack - Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - VM or LB as you find in Azure or AWS or Digital Ocean - Platform as a Service (PaaS) - sometimes called Container as a Service as you find in Heroku or Zeit Now - Function as as Service (FaaS) - a single function as you find in Lambda

bryanlarsen 8y ago
Technically CaaS could be IaaS, if you're just using containers as lightweight VM substitutes. Practically CaaS tends to be PaaS, because the hosting service is also providing a platform such as Kubernetes.
candiodari 8y ago
What's the practical difference between FaaS and the old style mod_php, mod_perl, mod_python and friends ?
- styfle 8y ago
  I think the difference is that you don’t know if the server is running Apache or nginx or IIS because it’s abstracted away. The only interface is the input into the function and the output it returns.

frou_dh 8y ago

"/cgi-bin/ Rides Again" was left on the cutting-room floor.

evilmushroom 8y ago
I see people getting excited about something new "past REST"... which by that what they mean is RPC.

moduspwnens14 8y ago

> I've seen this called Function as a Service and honestly I think using that term instead of Serverless would go a long way to fixing this issue But "Functions as a Service" doesn't cover what it is, though. The following AWS services are "serverless" but would not be "function as a service:" * S3 * API Gateway * SQS * SNS * Cognito * DynamoDB * CloudWatch (logs and metrics) * Step Functions In all cases, you are not provisioning or managing servers. Scaling is linear and costs are linear based on how much you use them, and typically based on what's actually being used (bytes stored, requests made, etc.) and not per-node. Because they're all hugely multi-tenant, they also cost almost nothing to use at low scale. "Functions as a service" covers serverless compute, but it doesn't cover the huge architectural difference (from the developer's perspective) between the services above and rolling your own (for example) S3.

brightball 8y ago
All of those would fall under IaaS/PaaS. If we're qualifying anything on a server that developers don't have to manage themselves as serverless than anything with an API becomes serverless...despite all of them actually running on servers.
- moduspwnens14 8y ago
  OK. I guess to me categorizing those things in the same bucket as EC2 or Salesforce is missing a pretty fundamental architectural difference and benefit. I'm not claiming "serverless" is an ideal term, but I haven't seen the case made for anything better.
manigandham 8y ago
Those are just managed services, as in managed versions of I/P/F/S-aaS. "Serverless" can be applied to every SaaS product ever made and is just an all-around meaningless and dumb-sounding term.
- dastbe 8y ago
  (aws employee) The distinction I've heard and make (regardless of serverless being the right term) is that these infrastructure services expose their control plane and data plane without tying you to the concept of a particular machine. Compare this to all publicly available forms of RDS where I still have to think in terms of machines for scaling and management.

hinkley 8y ago

I'd like to hear from the Erlang camp. It amuses me to think about what they must think of us darn kids taking their ideas and calling them something else. What's really the difference between FaaS and Erlang style message passing?

choward 8y ago

> The first time I heard "serverless" I assumed it was a totally in-browser application. So the term "serverless" made you think there was no server involved? What could have possibly made you think that? "Serverless" is up there with "cloud" for the dumbest most overused words in technology right now.

martin-adams 8y ago
BitTorrent and Napster is what made me think that
- dhimes 8y ago
  I think he was being sarcastic...
  - choward 8y ago
    I was. I refuse to use "/s" though.

duxup 8y ago

I feel like I know more after just reading your post.