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I keep rejecting this definition of "serverless" in my head. There's just as much server, it's just that someone else owns and operates the server, and holds yo

by Joeri 3y ago

I keep rejecting this definition of "serverless" in my head. There's just as much server, it's just that someone else owns and operates the server, and holds your data or application hostage when they want to. This thing currently called "serverless" is more like "server as a service", and creates more lock-in than what came before. True serverless would mean a return to dumb interchangeable servers: static progressive web applications hosted by dumb static http servers (e.g. github pages), connecting to interchangeable data storage (e.g. W3C solid pods), with client-side peer to peer synchronization of data using CRDT algorithms (e.g. Automerge, YJS, ...). When I think of the word "serverless", that's what comes to mind.

falcor84 3y ago
Hear hear. I'd be really interested in an open standard that would expose something like IndexedDB on the client-side while enabling sync and basic business logic. Maybe inspired by the firebase API.
- gelatocar 3y ago
  Not sure if you're thinking more of an official standard but PouchDB is open source and sounds similar to what you're talking about: https://pouchdb.com/ https://pouchdb.com/
endisneigh 3y ago
A strange take. If you’re going to be pedantic you might as well be correct - server less would mean literally that, no server required, e.g. Apple Notes or Microsoft Word 2010 and more similar to the end of your comment (a solid pod isn't serverless either btw) and CRDT is totally irrelevant here - you could use CRDTs and still not have an offline application. A GitHub page is in no way serverless. It’s totally inaccessible without internet and requires literally a remote server to function. Ironically GitHub page is more similar to the marketing definition of serverless.
- Joeri 3y ago
  If we’re going to be pedantic, let me point out that for a pwa a connection to the server is only required for initial install and successive data synchronization, so the operation of the web app I described is indeed literally serverless outside of those edge cases.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > for a pwa a connection to the server is only required for initial install and successive data synchronization, so the operation of the web app I described is indeed literally serverless outside of those edge cases. Should be. But I'm yet to see a PWA like that; all I've been victim of experiencing had all meaningful operations involve a round-trip through the cloud.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tomjen3 3y ago
I did the same for a long time, because it was obvously marketing BS, but when I looked into it a bit I realised that it was actually quite useful to have "programmable HTTP endpoints" og "Chron jobs in the cloud" where you don't have to worry about the details of running them. If they only run occasionally, they can be quite cheap too. And since the major cloud providers have something like that, your are no more hostage with these than you are with any other cloud stuff.
floodle 3y ago
This seems to be getting pendantic about nomenclature. There is no "true serverless", there is only the usage of the word that the majority of people use, which is to mean server-as-a-service. Nobody suggested it's a way to avoid lock-in. It's a way to avoiding managing servers. I don't see the problem here.
- abruzzi 3y ago
  When I saw serverless, my mind when right to ultra lightweight database-as-a-library like SQLlite. Not AWS or azure cloud.
  - leesalminen 3y ago
    Same here. In my formative years I was led to believe you had to use a “real” RDBMS for everything- MySQL or Postgres. Anything else was just a toy not suitable for use in the real world. I succumbed to the SQLite hype train in 2020 when every other post on HN was about it. I started building things with it. First, small things. Then bigger things. Now I’m at the point where I default to starting most things with SQLite unless there’s a really good reason. It’s incredible how far SQLite can take you. It feels almost like a cheat code. Wish I had jumped on the train years ago.
    - sophacles 3y ago
      > I succumbed to the SQLite hype train in 2020 when every other post on HN was about it Is it really a hype train when every 6-12 months since I joined this site there has been a ~1month period of sqlite on the front page every day? At some point a repeated and perennial "hype cycle" might just in fact be enthusiasm about a good product.
  - unscaled 3y ago
    When "serverless" just got started and mostly focused on running functions with infinite (and automatic) scalability, the term "Functions-as-a-Service" (FaaS) seemed like a good competitor for a while, but that ship has long sailed. It's a confusing term, but it's not the first one. We survived "JavaScript", and complaining it's not related to Java at all stopped being fashionable along with flip phones and it's only ever done as a joke[1]. I foresee the same thing would happen for serverless in 10 years, and we'll get tired of complaining that this term sucks. FWIW, we just have to internalize that serverless means "a service where you don't have to provision and manage your cloud servers and you don't even know how many of them are out there", just we collectively internalized that the HTTP Authorization header is the header responsible for Authentication. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36782761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36782761
bearjaws 3y ago
I always love this take as if AWS / GCP / Azure / literally any data center couldn't already do this to you. As for more lock in, how? If I use aurora postgres serverless I am 100% free to migrate to a regular postgres server, even on another provider. Nobody is thinking there is no server, except maybe my grandmother.
- leesalminen 3y ago
  I feel like Aurora might be a bad example for anti-lock-in. Perhaps vanilla RDS Postgres would be a better one? Aurora does add bells and whistles on top of vanilla Postgres that you’d be hard-pressed to find from other DBaaS vendors. Sure, you can pg_dump and pg_restore to another provider but you lose all the goodies that made you choose Aurora in the first place. For clarity, I’m a long-time happy user of Aurora and spend $super_big_money on it. Worth every penny IMHO.
  - ttfkam 3y ago
    Could you expand on this a bit? For context, I am also an Aurora user. I have on occasion used the functions to invoke lambdas and IAM auth, but 99.9% of the time, it's just stuff that comes with Postgres. I'm honestly curious as to which features you find most compelling that can't be found in vanilla Postgres.
- m_0x 3y ago
  One single database cluster might not be an issue to migrate to another cloud provider. But that single DB is just a piece of the business puzzle. Networking, web applications, even backups. That's hard to migrate (And hard here means it will take massive effort and time) Good teams have plans in case they need to migrate. But I think not all teams are prepared for such scenario.
itsoktocry 3y ago
>This thing currently called "serverless" is more like "server as a service" You can go ahead and call it "server as a service" (and have everyone look at you funny) while the rest of the development world cares zero about the pedantry and continues to build serverless applications without worrying about planning around or maintaining a server. "Serverless uses servers!" can be added to the list of predictable comments, along with "The Economics Nobel isn't real!" and "Correlation isn't causation!". We get it, it doesn't need to be repeated every time an adjacent subject is discussed.
- tacker2000 3y ago
  Sorry but this is just buzzword bingo. Why not call it cloud? Why throw around some ambiguous and meaningless term? It used to be that the so called “Computer Scientists” would be naming these things, but now it seems that its just another marketing department and lots of susceptible developers buy into that.
  - ggregoire 3y ago
    cloud vs. serverless: You can install postgres in a AWS EC2, it's in the "cloud" but you still have to do all the sysadmin work yourself. Or you can use a "serverless" postgres and let the provider do the sysadmin work for you. I guess you could call it "postgres as a service".
    - mpol 3y ago
      That is simply a managed server.
      - icedchai 3y ago
        It's more like a managed distributed system. A highly available serverless database, like AWS Aurora, is much more than "a server."
    - tacker2000 3y ago
      How is that server “less”? Just because you didnt install it using apt-get? Its still a server. It still uses a bare metal machine running a VM in some datacenter that is accessible remotely.
anewlanguage 3y ago
I really don't get the semantic arguments against serverless. The name perfectly describes what it is: an abstraction where the developer doesn't have to worry about a server. It's really that simple. If you have another model that you think is better, why don't you come up with a name for it, instead of trying to co-op a perfectly cromulent term that is already in wide usage?
- lisper 3y ago
  > The name perfectly describes what it is: an abstraction where the developer doesn't have to worry about a server. There is a difference between an abstraction that allows the user to ignore X, and the actual absence of X. Modern car engines, for example, are reliable enough that most drivers don't have to worry about them. But it's still a mistake to call a car with a reliable engine "engine-less".
FoomFries 3y ago
Since everything is a car analogy... A driverless vehicle doesn't require me to add a driver to reach a destination. A serverless solution doesn't require me to add a server to achieve the goal. Something is still driving the car, something is still serving the data. But it's out of my hands.
paulddraper 3y ago
Brb gonna start up my serverless MS Word.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by Joeri 3y ago

falcor84 3y ago

Hear hear. I'd be really interested in an open standard that would expose something like IndexedDB on the client-side while enabling sync and basic business logic. Maybe inspired by the firebase API.

gelatocar 3y ago
Not sure if you're thinking more of an official standard but PouchDB is open source and sounds similar to what you're talking about: https://pouchdb.com/ https://pouchdb.com/

endisneigh 3y ago

A strange take. If you’re going to be pedantic you might as well be correct - server less would mean literally that, no server required, e.g. Apple Notes or Microsoft Word 2010 and more similar to the end of your comment (a solid pod isn't serverless either btw) and CRDT is totally irrelevant here - you could use CRDTs and still not have an offline application. A GitHub page is in no way serverless. It’s totally inaccessible without internet and requires literally a remote server to function. Ironically GitHub page is more similar to the marketing definition of serverless.

Joeri 3y ago
If we’re going to be pedantic, let me point out that for a pwa a connection to the server is only required for initial install and successive data synchronization, so the operation of the web app I described is indeed literally serverless outside of those edge cases.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > for a pwa a connection to the server is only required for initial install and successive data synchronization, so the operation of the web app I described is indeed literally serverless outside of those edge cases. Should be. But I'm yet to see a PWA like that; all I've been victim of experiencing had all meaningful operations involve a round-trip through the cloud.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tomjen3 3y ago

I did the same for a long time, because it was obvously marketing BS, but when I looked into it a bit I realised that it was actually quite useful to have "programmable HTTP endpoints" og "Chron jobs in the cloud" where you don't have to worry about the details of running them. If they only run occasionally, they can be quite cheap too. And since the major cloud providers have something like that, your are no more hostage with these than you are with any other cloud stuff.

floodle 3y ago

This seems to be getting pendantic about nomenclature. There is no "true serverless", there is only the usage of the word that the majority of people use, which is to mean server-as-a-service. Nobody suggested it's a way to avoid lock-in. It's a way to avoiding managing servers. I don't see the problem here.

abruzzi 3y ago
When I saw serverless, my mind when right to ultra lightweight database-as-a-library like SQLlite. Not AWS or azure cloud.
- leesalminen 3y ago
  Same here. In my formative years I was led to believe you had to use a “real” RDBMS for everything- MySQL or Postgres. Anything else was just a toy not suitable for use in the real world. I succumbed to the SQLite hype train in 2020 when every other post on HN was about it. I started building things with it. First, small things. Then bigger things. Now I’m at the point where I default to starting most things with SQLite unless there’s a really good reason. It’s incredible how far SQLite can take you. It feels almost like a cheat code. Wish I had jumped on the train years ago.
  - sophacles 3y ago
    > I succumbed to the SQLite hype train in 2020 when every other post on HN was about it Is it really a hype train when every 6-12 months since I joined this site there has been a ~1month period of sqlite on the front page every day? At some point a repeated and perennial "hype cycle" might just in fact be enthusiasm about a good product.
- unscaled 3y ago
  When "serverless" just got started and mostly focused on running functions with infinite (and automatic) scalability, the term "Functions-as-a-Service" (FaaS) seemed like a good competitor for a while, but that ship has long sailed. It's a confusing term, but it's not the first one. We survived "JavaScript", and complaining it's not related to Java at all stopped being fashionable along with flip phones and it's only ever done as a joke[1]. I foresee the same thing would happen for serverless in 10 years, and we'll get tired of complaining that this term sucks. FWIW, we just have to internalize that serverless means "a service where you don't have to provision and manage your cloud servers and you don't even know how many of them are out there", just we collectively internalized that the HTTP Authorization header is the header responsible for Authentication. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36782761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36782761

bearjaws 3y ago

I always love this take as if AWS / GCP / Azure / literally any data center couldn't already do this to you. As for more lock in, how? If I use aurora postgres serverless I am 100% free to migrate to a regular postgres server, even on another provider. Nobody is thinking there is no server, except maybe my grandmother.

leesalminen 3y ago
I feel like Aurora might be a bad example for anti-lock-in. Perhaps vanilla RDS Postgres would be a better one? Aurora does add bells and whistles on top of vanilla Postgres that you’d be hard-pressed to find from other DBaaS vendors. Sure, you can pg_dump and pg_restore to another provider but you lose all the goodies that made you choose Aurora in the first place. For clarity, I’m a long-time happy user of Aurora and spend $super_big_money on it. Worth every penny IMHO.
- ttfkam 3y ago
  Could you expand on this a bit? For context, I am also an Aurora user. I have on occasion used the functions to invoke lambdas and IAM auth, but 99.9% of the time, it's just stuff that comes with Postgres. I'm honestly curious as to which features you find most compelling that can't be found in vanilla Postgres.
m_0x 3y ago
One single database cluster might not be an issue to migrate to another cloud provider. But that single DB is just a piece of the business puzzle. Networking, web applications, even backups. That's hard to migrate (And hard here means it will take massive effort and time) Good teams have plans in case they need to migrate. But I think not all teams are prepared for such scenario.

itsoktocry 3y ago

>This thing currently called "serverless" is more like "server as a service" You can go ahead and call it "server as a service" (and have everyone look at you funny) while the rest of the development world cares zero about the pedantry and continues to build serverless applications without worrying about planning around or maintaining a server. "Serverless uses servers!" can be added to the list of predictable comments, along with "The Economics Nobel isn't real!" and "Correlation isn't causation!". We get it, it doesn't need to be repeated every time an adjacent subject is discussed.

tacker2000 3y ago
Sorry but this is just buzzword bingo. Why not call it cloud? Why throw around some ambiguous and meaningless term? It used to be that the so called “Computer Scientists” would be naming these things, but now it seems that its just another marketing department and lots of susceptible developers buy into that.
- ggregoire 3y ago
  cloud vs. serverless: You can install postgres in a AWS EC2, it's in the "cloud" but you still have to do all the sysadmin work yourself. Or you can use a "serverless" postgres and let the provider do the sysadmin work for you. I guess you could call it "postgres as a service".
  - mpol 3y ago
    That is simply a managed server.
    - icedchai 3y ago
      It's more like a managed distributed system. A highly available serverless database, like AWS Aurora, is much more than "a server."
  - tacker2000 3y ago
    How is that server “less”? Just because you didnt install it using apt-get? Its still a server. It still uses a bare metal machine running a VM in some datacenter that is accessible remotely.

anewlanguage 3y ago

I really don't get the semantic arguments against serverless. The name perfectly describes what it is: an abstraction where the developer doesn't have to worry about a server. It's really that simple. If you have another model that you think is better, why don't you come up with a name for it, instead of trying to co-op a perfectly cromulent term that is already in wide usage?

lisper 3y ago
> The name perfectly describes what it is: an abstraction where the developer doesn't have to worry about a server. There is a difference between an abstraction that allows the user to ignore X, and the actual absence of X. Modern car engines, for example, are reliable enough that most drivers don't have to worry about them. But it's still a mistake to call a car with a reliable engine "engine-less".

FoomFries 3y ago

Since everything is a car analogy... A driverless vehicle doesn't require me to add a driver to reach a destination. A serverless solution doesn't require me to add a server to achieve the goal. Something is still driving the car, something is still serving the data. But it's out of my hands.

paulddraper 3y ago

Brb gonna start up my serverless MS Word.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]