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I think I will always struggle to understand the popularity of the term serverless. From the two definitions found in https://www.sqlite.org/serverless.html ht

I think I will always struggle to understand the popularity of the term serverless. From the two definitions found in https://www.sqlite.org/serverless.html https://www.sqlite.org/serverless.html classic serverless --> "embedded database" exists and is often used neo-serverless --> I suspect that this is a marketing term used to attract cool people to new cloud offerings (like "jamstack" for services such as netlify). There is no good replacement here because the term was tied to this new kind of infrastructure really early. But anytime I hear someone repeat "of course serverless does not mean there is no server!" I die a little more. Naming things is hard but at least we ought to try to come up with terms that are not blatantly misleading.

ohnemint 6y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the term originated as a marketing tactic (e.g., AWS) to seed in people's heads the idea of not having to care about servers
- deepstack 6y ago
  You hit the nail on the head. It is all about marketing for the new front-end developers who don't want to learn "server side" manipulation db, files, etc. Personally the whole indexdb, localstorage really break the web page as a stateless model. Why do you need save so much local data to just maintain the session? Stop putting everything in the web browser.
  - ohnemint 6y ago
    I can see the value of serverless in general (not this hack necessarily) in small startups that don't have sysadmins on payroll but still want to rapidly deploy products with confidence that it will just work - all without worrying about infrastructure, scaling, etc. What I'm curious is if (1) serverless is cheaper than hiring competent sysadmins who can maintain the infrastructure instead and (2) are these savings worth being locked into a chaotic architecture and boring proprietary tooling that is forced on you for the profit of the Google, Microsoft, and Amazon monopolies? I've recently entered the job market and personally find no joy in working in serverless environments because of the latter.
    - jeltz 6y ago
      Personally I suspect that the chaotic tooling will waste more dev time than what the sysadmin time will cost you. So that it will be a net loss even before you consider lock-in and fees.
      - pdimitar 6y ago
        While a good argument in favor of the vendor locked-in serverless services can be made at the start of a project, it looks like a net loss during any other phase of the project. It comes down to if you want to have generic and reusable sysadmins vs. cloud serverless specialists.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - sojournerc 6y ago
      Heroku fits the bill for me. Very easy to manage and scale, still cheaper than an SRE or sysadmin.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    You don't need local state to maintain a session other than possibly storing a Token, but that's very small. Storing data locally is often out of convenience or possibly for cached data for offline support. There are valid reasons for maintaining local state.
  - jimbokun 6y ago
    > Why do you need save so much local data to just maintain the session? Stop putting everything in the web browser. I guess that's to replace the traditional desktop application with something that can be deployed over the web?
  - recursive 6y ago
    Stateless was gone with the invention of cookies and authentication.
- kitd 6y ago
  I think I heard it first wrt GAE, but I think it was more "wry observation" then than actual "thing".
yepthatsreality 6y ago
All this serverless talk is just marketing speak for limited shared-hosting environment.
kentonv 6y ago
Look, the industry has settled on the term "serverless" to mean: "You just upload some application code and the system automatically provisions servers to run it." No one has the power to change this. It's like saying "I think the word 'spoon' is stupid, let's all call it 'scooper' instead." This is our language now, it is what it is. Vendors offering serverless solutions have to call it "serverless" whether they like it or not because that's the word customers understand. You can keep complaining about it, but it won't change. You might as well accept it and move on. "Cloud" is a stupid term too, your servers aren't really floating in the sky. But here we are.
- adolph 6y ago
  <something>“less” has been in use for a long time and typically means a paradigm shift in how the <something> is performed. Horseless carriages still had means of locomotion; driverless cars will still have a means of effecting driver functions; eggless recipes typically have some other substance to perform the job of eggs. In my mind <something>”less” is not as objectionable as <something>”-free” like “sugar-free” which isn’t to say that something isn’t sweet, but that the sweetening comes from something else.
  - vinay_ys 6y ago
    whereas "sugarless" means its not sweet :)
    - leeoniya 6y ago
      but "sugar-free" means it's sweet again
- pjc50 6y ago
  If only somebody would come up with a Common Interface for application Gateways that would let the webserver dynamically select based on URL routing which executable to provision temporarily to generate that page.
  - 6y ago
mikesabbagh 6y ago
the difference between serverless and managed service is actually that when there are no requests the serverless is offline and not costing you much.
specialist 6y ago
I really thought we'd have grid computing, aka utility computing. Running our self-contained software agents, persisting data and state in ubiquitous tuplespaces. That's my excuse for being so slow to grasp "cloud". When AWS made EC2 public, I really didn't understand why anyone would want to use it. Cloud era "serverless" just pisses me off. The applicable cliche is "Every sufficiently complex C project recreates LISP, poorly." It's seems like we're doomed to repeatedly reinvent the past. Championed by youngsters who never read the book. Maybe this explains "worse is better". I know, I know. I've become the old crank. All you noisy kids get off my lawn.
- btilly 6y ago
  That's Greenspun's 10th rule. The full version of which is, "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of CommonLisp." Robert Morris' addendum is, "Including Common Lisp." If you don't believe Robert Morris, tell me what LOOP does. :-) (Note, this is the Robert Morris who wrote the first major internet worm, cofounded Viaweb with Paul Graham, and cofounded YCombinator, again with Paul Graham.)
dakna 6y ago
I think the term is just fine. For me it doesn't mean that there is no server involved to run the app, it means I'm not involved to run the server.
discodave 6y ago
> I think I will always struggle to understand the popularity of the term serverless. AWS marketing is very good. Serverless was a creation of the AWS Lambda team / AWS marketing department "I helped start the serverless movement..." from the LinkedIn of Tim Wagner (https://www.linkedin.com/in/timawagner/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/timawagner/)

ohnemint 6y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the term originated as a marketing tactic (e.g., AWS) to seed in people's heads the idea of not having to care about servers

deepstack 6y ago
You hit the nail on the head. It is all about marketing for the new front-end developers who don't want to learn "server side" manipulation db, files, etc. Personally the whole indexdb, localstorage really break the web page as a stateless model. Why do you need save so much local data to just maintain the session? Stop putting everything in the web browser.
- ohnemint 6y ago
  I can see the value of serverless in general (not this hack necessarily) in small startups that don't have sysadmins on payroll but still want to rapidly deploy products with confidence that it will just work - all without worrying about infrastructure, scaling, etc. What I'm curious is if (1) serverless is cheaper than hiring competent sysadmins who can maintain the infrastructure instead and (2) are these savings worth being locked into a chaotic architecture and boring proprietary tooling that is forced on you for the profit of the Google, Microsoft, and Amazon monopolies? I've recently entered the job market and personally find no joy in working in serverless environments because of the latter.
  - jeltz 6y ago
    Personally I suspect that the chaotic tooling will waste more dev time than what the sysadmin time will cost you. So that it will be a net loss even before you consider lock-in and fees.
    - pdimitar 6y ago
      While a good argument in favor of the vendor locked-in serverless services can be made at the start of a project, it looks like a net loss during any other phase of the project. It comes down to if you want to have generic and reusable sysadmins vs. cloud serverless specialists.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sojournerc 6y ago
    Heroku fits the bill for me. Very easy to manage and scale, still cheaper than an SRE or sysadmin.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  You don't need local state to maintain a session other than possibly storing a Token, but that's very small. Storing data locally is often out of convenience or possibly for cached data for offline support. There are valid reasons for maintaining local state.
- jimbokun 6y ago
  > Why do you need save so much local data to just maintain the session? Stop putting everything in the web browser. I guess that's to replace the traditional desktop application with something that can be deployed over the web?
- recursive 6y ago
  Stateless was gone with the invention of cookies and authentication.
kitd 6y ago
I think I heard it first wrt GAE, but I think it was more "wry observation" then than actual "thing".

yepthatsreality 6y ago

All this serverless talk is just marketing speak for limited shared-hosting environment.

kentonv 6y ago

Look, the industry has settled on the term "serverless" to mean: "You just upload some application code and the system automatically provisions servers to run it." No one has the power to change this. It's like saying "I think the word 'spoon' is stupid, let's all call it 'scooper' instead." This is our language now, it is what it is. Vendors offering serverless solutions have to call it "serverless" whether they like it or not because that's the word customers understand. You can keep complaining about it, but it won't change. You might as well accept it and move on. "Cloud" is a stupid term too, your servers aren't really floating in the sky. But here we are.

adolph 6y ago
<something>“less” has been in use for a long time and typically means a paradigm shift in how the <something> is performed. Horseless carriages still had means of locomotion; driverless cars will still have a means of effecting driver functions; eggless recipes typically have some other substance to perform the job of eggs. In my mind <something>”less” is not as objectionable as <something>”-free” like “sugar-free” which isn’t to say that something isn’t sweet, but that the sweetening comes from something else.
- vinay_ys 6y ago
  whereas "sugarless" means its not sweet :)
  - leeoniya 6y ago
    but "sugar-free" means it's sweet again
pjc50 6y ago
If only somebody would come up with a Common Interface for application Gateways that would let the webserver dynamically select based on URL routing which executable to provision temporarily to generate that page.
- 6y ago

mikesabbagh 6y ago

the difference between serverless and managed service is actually that when there are no requests the serverless is offline and not costing you much.

specialist 6y ago

I really thought we'd have grid computing, aka utility computing. Running our self-contained software agents, persisting data and state in ubiquitous tuplespaces. That's my excuse for being so slow to grasp "cloud". When AWS made EC2 public, I really didn't understand why anyone would want to use it. Cloud era "serverless" just pisses me off. The applicable cliche is "Every sufficiently complex C project recreates LISP, poorly." It's seems like we're doomed to repeatedly reinvent the past. Championed by youngsters who never read the book. Maybe this explains "worse is better". I know, I know. I've become the old crank. All you noisy kids get off my lawn.

btilly 6y ago
That's Greenspun's 10th rule. The full version of which is, "Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of CommonLisp." Robert Morris' addendum is, "Including Common Lisp." If you don't believe Robert Morris, tell me what LOOP does. :-) (Note, this is the Robert Morris who wrote the first major internet worm, cofounded Viaweb with Paul Graham, and cofounded YCombinator, again with Paul Graham.)

dakna 6y ago

I think the term is just fine. For me it doesn't mean that there is no server involved to run the app, it means I'm not involved to run the server.

discodave 6y ago

> I think I will always struggle to understand the popularity of the term serverless. AWS marketing is very good. Serverless was a creation of the AWS Lambda team / AWS marketing department "I helped start the serverless movement..." from the LinkedIn of Tim Wagner (https://www.linkedin.com/in/timawagner/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/timawagner/)