
Ask HN: Without Googling it, what's your definition of Serverless? - mrmrcoleman
We (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;implicit-explicit.com&#x2F;) are helping organise ServerlessConf (http:&#x2F;&#x2F;serverlessconf.io&#x2F;) along with A Cloud Guru (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;acloud.guru&#x2F;), RedMonk (redmonk.com&#x2F;) and Serverless.com.<p>A lot of people have been asking me, &#x27;What is Serverless&#x27; and after giving my answer a bunch of times I got bored and start flipping the question back to the questioner.<p>I&#x27;ve been amazed by the huge number of different answers I&#x27;ve received, so I figured let&#x27;s have some fun and open it up to HN.<p>What&#x27;s you definition of Serverless?
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jnky
I define serverless as something that is client-only and/or peer-to-peer.

In that sense I'm baffled that you guys define Serverless as something that
relies on services on Amazon's servers.

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skewart
Yeah, I agree with the other commenters that "serverless" is a pretty silly
way to describe something that involves lots and lots of servers.

If you told me you created a "serverless app" or your app had a "serverless
architecture" I would think it either had no off-device communication, or only
peer-to-peer communication.

That said, I totally understand the reasoning behind calling a backend
composed of lots of 3rd-party services "serverless". You're not doing as much
of the work of maintaining a traditional server-side app. And if you just have
a few Lambda functions that hook into data stores you don't have to think
about anything that resembles a server in a more traditional sense.

The "serverless" term is kind of brilliant from a marketing perspective. It's
ambiguous, a little confusing, and really just wrong. People will love to
point out how stupid it is. And that means they'll think about it, and
remember it, and tell other people about it. And then they'll get used to it
and it won't seem wrong or stupid - it'll just be the way you describe these
kinds of systems.

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kowdermeister
I find this a really confusing concept. It something is sitting on a Digital
Ocean / AWS server then it's a server, no matter how you package it, I don't
care how that JSON is returned to my client.

I know what it means btw: decoupled microservices instead of a complex
webapps.

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mrmrcoleman
This fits with what I've seen so far. People are confused by the term
serverless. My understanding is that it refers to the fact that there is less
interaction with servers, on the traditional server admin level.

I'll be speaking to a lot of people at ServerlessConf next week and will be
curious to see the outcome.

Perhaps I'll blog about it and drop a link here on HN.

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detaro
peer2peer applications of all kinds (e.g. BitTorrent, even though people use
servers as downloaders or seedboxes, they are not required)

