Server-less is the new paradigm where the server is in the cloud. More specifically, you're not maintaining any server, you just supply callbacks written in the language of your choice, and the infrastructure figures out how to package them in containers, deploy, run, scale and dispose when no longer needed.
Can you explain what you mean with "server is in the cloud", is it like literal placing a fog machine to make some kind of cloud around your servers or placing a server inside another server, such as a raspberry pi within a PC box?
It is, but taken literally and not helpful in infrastructure discussions.
"Serverless service" as recently coined means you're not concerned with the server layer. Either the hardware one, or the "http request server" one. What you provide is functions that execute on some action. As long as the API is preserved it doesn't matter if it's one server of one/multiple providers, cloud deployment, room filled with monkeys at keyboards, linux running unicorn, windows running iis, or anything else.
It's one level above "set up your services and upload code for specific server" PAAS. And two or so levels above "set up your own servers and services" IAAS.
PS. I don't think sdees matches the definition of serverless as it's commonly understood.
> Ah I see, so serverless service is a way to say "I am so high up higher than your puny little cloud down there".
I don't believe there's any judgement in "serverless service". Depending on your requirements you may want this solution or you may prefer something else. It got a name, because when you get tired of saying "model more abstract than PAAS but based on the same principles of being independent of the infrastructure" you invent a short name - servers got abstracted, so it's "serverless".
> its just funny how our industry invents new words every year or so, it gets hard to keep uptodate.
The industry doesn't invent words. It invents new solutions. If they get popular they get names, so it's easier to communicate. That's how every industry works.
Reading the code of others is no substitute for writing code yourself.
It's very easy when looking at the solution to a problem to say "I would've thought of that" and maybe you're right. But maybe not.
Having real experience of the consequences of your decisions, keeping skin in the game, is also important. Maybe not for every single decision, but a representative sample.
you mean value types rather than primitives right? (Strings are objects)
It would be saner if everything was non null by default. There'd be no need for a ! then and no ambiguity for beginners around whether something is nullable or not. No downside for non-beginners either unless they're in the habit of using more nullable parameters/vars than non-nullable, which doesn't seem like a particularly good idea...
Agreed on the defaults, although you then have the problem of reconciling with the native JS type system. I'm unclear on what this PR does to address that for TS - in strict null check mode, can an e.g. Node be null by default? If so, does the native "Node" object then become "Node|null"? At some level this has to be addressed.
Native objects can never be null. If its an object, it already isnt null. Functions，property accessors etc. can return Node or null or undefined, which can be modelled accordingly on a per-function basis
Libertarians find it ridiculous and innocent to think that moneyed people or corporations are not going to lobby, bribe, manipulate and otherwise take advantage of a political system that can arbitrarily create subsidies, trade barriers, zoning laws, etc. If the opportunity to profit by corrupting the system exists, it will happen. Appealing to morality is naive. So is running around trying to plug the holes in our laws and tweak incentives. The only way to plug the whole is to take away the opportunity by constraining and defunding the government, reducing their ability to be corrupted.
Neo-Marxists find it ridiculous to think that we can have a handful of billionaires & corporations controlling all the wealth in a country without that handful manipulating and controlling the political system. Big money has always come hand in hand with power. It's silly to expect morality to fix this. The super wealthy will control government. We can either be ruled by the wealthy or we can eliminate wealth of this magnitude. Those are the only choices.
Personally I think both of these are naive, in much the same way. They are modernist ideas that assume an understanding we just don't have. Human systems are complex and cannot be designed. The idea that we can start with a limited set of laws and a small government and let everything else emerge, and that the consequences of that emergence (including the political ones that may derail it) will be acceptable is not that different from the old communist 10 year plans.
Ideas like skin-in-the-game are in that category, IMO. Useful as a perspective. Sometimes useful in practice. Not realistic as a solution in many/most cases. Sometimes the world present opportunities for asymmetric risk. Even if we go by the Hammurabi code suggested by Nassim Taleb (currently promoting this idea) of killing an architect who's building collapses there is potential for asymmetric risk. Maybe its small and asymmetric enough to be worth it (5% chance of killing 100 people; huge commission; the architect is old anyway) Maybe the immortal legacy of building a temple is worth the risk of death to the architect, but not the risk of death to the worshipers.
My point was that I don't think we can build systems (or meta systems that let systems emerge) that don't have a risk of moral hazard. Moral hazards exist. Usually morality is the anecdote. Sometimes it isn't
I think the big problem with designing human systems is that as systems evolve there is a parallel unpredictable cultural evolution.
I guess the only reasonable way to design human systems is through a slow process of evolution and iterative design, at each point trying to modify rules to adapt to the culture that develops around how people use the system as it exists. When a system is fully formed, along with the system rules there are also a raft of social norms that determine how it functions within society. Moral hazards create situations where individuals are incentivised to break the social norms that align with the goals of the system. Once norms get eroded, that behaviour can become commonplace, and you end up with broken systems.
Unfortunately, the meta-systems we have in place restrict what changes are possible/incentivised. Also, people tend to have a limited imagination when it comes to solving broken systems usually wanting either a) more rules, b) harsher punishments or c) to get rid of the system entirely. So, if there's a public outcry, it's usually calling attention to a real problem, but calling for an impractical solution.
Personally I don't think the current meta-systems we have in Western capitalist democracies are optimal. I'm sure that better can be done. However, I'm also very sure that we can't do better by building on idealistic principles - because of the massive changes that would entail and the corresponding unpredictability of the results.
It's interesting that libertarians and neo-marxists basically want a really extreme change in two directions that almost never happen. The rich tend to always get richer, the government tends to always get bigger in size and scope. I guess this is kind of like the "get rid of it entirely" mentality. Perhaps it would be better to seek out changes to our current system that would allow iterations towards reducing income disparity and shrinking of the government.
Nice post, thanks for writing. It's interesting how we don't then focus (at least in the now secular West) on ways for morality to be seeped into our collective consciousness. The answer historically has always been religion (at least in the last few millenia) but today people get all jumpy when even trying to talk about it.
Yeah, antidote. I can't believe how sloppy my writing is these days.
I'm not sure how religion plays into things. You can see on the thread a very strong example of how modernism still dominates a lot of our thinking. We want to be able to place 'moral issues' into rational epistemological frameworks or political theories. I have the same instincts. Does game theory work here? Can we tweak & changing the legal definition of corporations or encouraging limited partnerships to avoid this or that pathology?
You're right that even talking about morality feels religious. I think its a mistake to avoid dealing with morality as an independent thing. These attempts to get morality from amorality are a dead end, I think. I don't accept that politicians are inevitably amoral slaves to political expediency. That's bullshit. Even the US, with it "conservative" streak of libertarian-rationalism was built by people of moral virtue or at the very least a mythology of those people. Fuzzy as it is, morality is a central part of being human.
I think you misunderstand the libertarian position. You can lobby a minimalist government all you like, it can't do anything to help you because it doesn't have the power or resources to do so.
The thing I find silly with libertarianism is that you're describing an ideal with a massive power vacuum - one that will be filled. So government is minimalist and ineffectual, in that case, they are a sham and the real "governance" is done by large corporations/wealthy behind closed doors.
Similar downsides as a large central government, but you have no vote unless you're massively wealthy/powerful.
By 'constraining and defunding the government' I basically mean smaller government in budget & scope/mandate. Is that different from your definition of minimalist?
>Ensure top level management has skin in the game (e.g. partnership).
It's better than nothing, sure. But let's not forget that over half of Richard Fuld's wealth was in Lehman Brothers stock. It didn't prevent him from flying his company straight into the ground.
I was there for a few days at the beginning of July and they had those warnings then too (plus a body heat scanner, which was a little bit disconcerting because I was very warm at that point!!)
with 1) it seems like what you're saying is that given a closed system, you cannot accurately observe and record the whole state of that system within the system itself.
This feels right on the surface, but is it actually true?
A quine contains a complete record of itself. That's an extreme case to be sure, but it does seem to provide at least one counterexample . . . (of a system that contains itself, not necessarily a system that actually observes and records itself)
A recording of a system does not need to contain everything in order for that recording to by played back, as long as the replay system is deterministic -- you just need to record the random inputs. E.g. see the way they do it in video games [http://www.gamedev.net/topic/439336-replay-system/]
I'm not saying that it is possible, just it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand just because it feels like it should be impossible.
why would you need to re-read every line if you are looking at methods that have a single responsibility and that responsibility is clearly communicated through the name? (and parameter types/name, return types/names, in languages where some of those things are available)
