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I find this article frustrating. Yes, basically you can classify any managed online service as “Serverless”. Amazon was somewhat clever when using this term for

I find this article frustrating. Yes, basically you can classify any managed online service as “Serverless”. Amazon was somewhat clever when using this term for Lambda, although personally I hate it (there are servers in the back end, all that’s changed is who provisions, manages, and supports them). On the Berkeley paper: >For a model training problem: “Lambda’s limited resources and data-shipping architecture mean that running this algorithm on Lambda is 21×slower and 7.3× more expensive than running on EC2.” Did Amazon pitch that Lambda is always the better solution that EC2 for every problem set? An experienced engineer or architect must be able to weigh the pros and cons to decide on which solution is correct. Lambda, FaaS etc doesn’t solve every use case. Is the author just trying to point out this specific fact or is it a frustration that Lambda isn’t a silver bullet? >It is foolish to assume that we’ve all the serverless primitives necessary to solve all current and future programming problems. Who is arguing we have them all?

justinsaccount 8y ago
> Did Amazon pitch that Lambda is always the better solution that EC2 for every problem set? Nope, which is why they have things like https://aws.amazon.com/batch/ https://aws.amazon.com/batch/ as well. I don't know why the paper picks on lambda either.
- throwaway98121 8y ago
  Lambda is pretty useful. My team had a use case for data pipelines and some quick, easy monitors that do health checks. I despise the term serverless, but yeah... I see posts like this one, and it’s amazing even among seemingly intelligent circles, there are so many folks who will shit on something or a concept with absolutely no alternative or solution from them. Don’t just complain. If you know of a better way, tell us or go do it yourself.

justinsaccount 8y ago

> Did Amazon pitch that Lambda is always the better solution that EC2 for every problem set? Nope, which is why they have things like https://aws.amazon.com/batch/ https://aws.amazon.com/batch/ as well. I don't know why the paper picks on lambda either.

throwaway98121 8y ago
Lambda is pretty useful. My team had a use case for data pipelines and some quick, easy monitors that do health checks. I despise the term serverless, but yeah... I see posts like this one, and it’s amazing even among seemingly intelligent circles, there are so many folks who will shit on something or a concept with absolutely no alternative or solution from them. Don’t just complain. If you know of a better way, tell us or go do it yourself.