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It's always interesting to see terminology evolve. "Serverless" started as a hosting terminology, to mean "somebody else's servers". Here, it's still being us

It's always interesting to see terminology evolve. "Serverless" started as a hosting terminology, to mean "somebody else's servers". Here, it's still being used to mean "somebody else's servers", but in a domain that could reasonably use "serverless" to mean "without a server" instead. Caching to a local hard drive is, almost by definition, serverless. It's a very neat application, but the terminology erks me.

junon 6y ago
"Serverless" was a company name, IIRC. Their model caught on and was hijacked by the community. Now it's one of those nebulous buzzwords that means everything and nothing.
- erikerikson 6y ago
  Yes, Serverless Inc. creators of the serverless framework (but it went the other direction). The framework is an open source tool that you can use to "deploy" "serverless" assets. Basically it covers most of those scripts you usually have to write and gives you a declarative format with some great variable capabilities that help you managed config and declare your components clearly. Running the tool deploys to your cloud of choice and results in functions, APIs, workflows, databases, or whatever you declare now existing and ready for use. Far more seriously in usage, the framework is separate from the class of services regarded as serverless. The star that kicked it off was AWS Lambda. Serverless colloquially means you are dealing with an abstract service contract rather than a server (e.g. the oldest is S3). This removes patching and other maintenance that usually does not directly support business value. More formally, serverless includes auto-scaling to zero, paying only for what you use, high availability, and other design patterns most outside the large tech houses cannot use at low to no cost. Full disclosure: I contributed to the serverless framework. I'm a biased fanboy.

junon 6y ago

"Serverless" was a company name, IIRC. Their model caught on and was hijacked by the community. Now it's one of those nebulous buzzwords that means everything and nothing.

erikerikson 6y ago
Yes, Serverless Inc. creators of the serverless framework (but it went the other direction). The framework is an open source tool that you can use to "deploy" "serverless" assets. Basically it covers most of those scripts you usually have to write and gives you a declarative format with some great variable capabilities that help you managed config and declare your components clearly. Running the tool deploys to your cloud of choice and results in functions, APIs, workflows, databases, or whatever you declare now existing and ready for use. Far more seriously in usage, the framework is separate from the class of services regarded as serverless. The star that kicked it off was AWS Lambda. Serverless colloquially means you are dealing with an abstract service contract rather than a server (e.g. the oldest is S3). This removes patching and other maintenance that usually does not directly support business value. More formally, serverless includes auto-scaling to zero, paying only for what you use, high availability, and other design patterns most outside the large tech houses cannot use at low to no cost. Full disclosure: I contributed to the serverless framework. I'm a biased fanboy.