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Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's abstracting above having to manage and think about servers. Just as most developers stopped having to think about registers or print drivers or low-level network protocols or memory pages. You still have all these but you gain big by having technologies that let you abstract away from these levels of detail. Buzzwordy, yeah sure. But the meaning and implications are pretty powerful.
But we already have a name for that: PaaS.
Seriously, come on. People still have to think about their servers. AWS is nice, yes, but it still uses servers, and developers and ops people still need to think about those servers.
It not like I press the magic button and my distributed app suddenly becomes available for millions to use simultaneously. I have to think (really hard) about what services I need, how they interact, how they scale in relation to each other, how to deal with failure scenarios, etc etc. None of this has gone away with the advent of "cloud" computing, and there is no way to invisibly scale your app (save maybe Heroku-like services, but they break down at high load).
Is it becoming easier to deploy scalable applications? Yes. But let's not confuse the fact that hourly pricing on VPS instances is still just running your app on a VPS, no matter how many of them there are. You still need to know your fair share of unix commands and you still need to be smart about the different pieces and how they interact. This is nothing new.
Let's also not forget what the cloud really is: an annoyingly overused buzzword thrown around by people who have never actually logged into a server in their lives.
I didn't go it. After all I've been coding distributed applications since early 90's. So what changed in network topologies?
> The phrase “serverless” doesn’t mean servers are no longer involved. So it's a meaningless buzzword. Got it.
Recently I've been fascinated with software architectures that shift the locus of control back to the client, instead of the server/cloud. So seeing "serverless" in the title caught my attention, only to find that it too looked like just another buzzword..
It's nice that web applications are starting to pick up on this concept. Browsers are advanced enough that the entire front-end can be run 100% in the browser, which shifts a good portion of the app that used to have to be scaled from server to the client. That way you can focus on scaling your API. This split I've noticed also tends to make client-side web apps more responsive (even if it's just an illusion), which people appreciate.
Ok, so 20 years ago, we all had to rely on lowly, pathetic servers. But now , thanks to THE CLOUUUUDD (read: hourly pricing on servers) there is a nebulous sludge of buzzwords running your applications, instead. Seriously, come on. People still have to think about their servers. AWS is nice, yes, but it still uses servers , and developers and ops people still need to think about those servers . It not like I press th…
Of course. That's the whole point. The abstraction layer is moving up. We're choosing from cloud "services" now to scale various pieces of our apps rather than putting them all onto servers, VPS's, AMI's, etc.
There's a long ways to go but you'll see much less (or no) need for unix level commands, software installations, etc.
I for one, can't wait for the day I never need to log into a server.
(An app in the cloud is debatably a server, not a client in the cloud. The browser is still needed and still there is a client.)
From the title I thought he was going to go farther towards the peer-based content-centric ideas, where the network nodes being addressed are actually data nodes rather than server nodes, and the data is distributed by peers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-centric_networking
Many dismiss that type of peer-based networking as something that will 'never' work for the mainstream internet, but I think you just need sophisticated encryption (bitcoin level) and good upstream bandwidth.
The only thing I expect from the "cloud" is proper routing.
All the rest of the storage and computing can be done at the endpoints. This isn't some revolutionary idea. It's how the internet was originally imagined by Paul Baran.
Endpoints will vary. They will have different needs and capacities to meet them. Some may be even be "services" to which other subscribe. But there's no requirement for ubiquitous middlemen. Everything is not a service that requires a third party.
What's next, TaaS? Thinking as a Service?
The future of software is one of empowerment with less third party involvement.