> Perhaps it is just a weird "renascence of Operating Systems"?
"Serverless" really comes down to being a fancy inetd(8). The "new" part is all in proprietary software-as-a-service to automate server deployment, cluster management and configuration, network configuration, access control, and log collection. In the next technology cycle 6-10 years from now, people will realize that having so much of your software tied into proprietary software-as-a-service is an idea that is even worse than running on proprietary operating systems (NT, Netware, VMS) was in the 1990s.
> I feel it is like reinventing executables, the dumb way.
Consider this: in the Unix philosophy, most executables consist of taking things that should be procedures and packaging them up as programs. "Serverless" is largely about applying the Unix philosophy to SaaS - "microservices." So now you are taking things that are really procedures, packaging them up as executables, then packaging those programs up as Internet servers.
I heard or read somewhere a quip that debugging this "stack" is something like the Russian fairytale about Кощей[1]: you have to find a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron chest, which is buried under an oak tree, which is on an island.
"Serverless" really comes down to being a fancy inetd(8). The "new" part is all in proprietary software-as-a-service to automate server deployment, cluster management and configuration, network configuration, access control, and log collection. In the next technology cycle 6-10 years from now, people will realize that having so much of your software tied into proprietary software-as-a-service is an idea that is even worse than running on proprietary operating systems (NT, Netware, VMS) was in the 1990s.
> I feel it is like reinventing executables, the dumb way.
Consider this: in the Unix philosophy, most executables consist of taking things that should be procedures and packaging them up as programs. "Serverless" is largely about applying the Unix philosophy to SaaS - "microservices." So now you are taking things that are really procedures, packaging them up as executables, then packaging those programs up as Internet servers.
I heard or read somewhere a quip that debugging this "stack" is something like the Russian fairytale about Кощей[1]: you have to find a needle, which is in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a hare, which is in an iron chest, which is buried under an oak tree, which is on an island.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koschei