Hacker News Reader

What was the original meaning? When I hear "serverless" I think basically:

1. I don't have to think about or manage any servers

2. Usage is metered at a very fine-grained level (per X requests to the API/per GB of data/etc)

3. No fixed cost. You only pay for usage.

Was there a different meaning originally?

Distributed apps. No central server involved. Peer to peer is one. Or each app is a server too and the information propagates in ripple like style. You connect to me, we sync, then another connects to me and this way the info that only you had now he has it too (and me of course). That's the original serverless idea. Not this walled garden crap with "cloud". Cloud is just a computer that is not yours and anything you put in there it's no longer just yours (or in most cases when you lose the account is no longer yours, period! - HN has plenty of horror stories from Google, Amazon, Microsoft that shit on people and call it rain).

> Distributed apps. No central server involved. Peer to peer is one. Or each app is a server too and the information propagates in ripple like style. You connect to me, we sync, then another connects to me and this way the info that only you had now he has it too (and me of course). That's the original serverless idea.

I don't remember those ever being called "serverless". Certainly "peer to peer" or "distributed" have a lot more traction.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com