> It's interesting by the way that you keep using product names "Lambda", "API Gateway" which aren't concepts but Amazon products. That's marketing. It's like calling all social networks "Facebooks". "Serverless" is a marketing device to sell Amazon services, I think people get it by now.
Amazon is a leader in this area right now but let's not use them. We can talk about Microsoft, IBM, or Google. They use "serverless" to describe their products. Google calls cloud functions a "serverless platform" and "serverless microservices" (https://cloud.google.com/functions/).
Azure functions talk about "processing events with serverless code" and so on. I only meant to use Amazon is an example because people are more familiar with their products.
Serverless is just a descriptor for these kinds of technologies and patterns.
I think we might be thinking about Serverless slightly differently. To me serverless is not just AWS Lambda. It's a broader theme that encompasses Function-as-a-Service technologies like Lambda and Backend-as-a-Service technologies like Firebase & Auth0.
Combining FaaS, BaaS, and using certain techniques and patterns is what makes Serverless. As a developer I am plenty aware that there are servers - I don't feel that there is any voodoo or black magic. However, when someone says that they have a serverless system I immediately understand what they are trying to say. They are saying that they don't need to manage, provision, scale, and look after servers. Honestly, the world "serverless" is a lot less confusing than "cloud".
I am not sure what you mean by "there is still a server fronting the whole thing". You don't need to scale the API Gateway yourself (again it's a managed service). Same goes for Azure functions, Google Cloud Functions and OpenWhisk as they all have HTTP listeners built in.
I am sure people have said this but it's "serverless" from the perspective of the user (who is a developer in this case). The developer doesn't have to deal with servers/infrastructure so for them the system is serverless.
I guess it's like wireless... Something could be wireless from the perspective of the end user but there are still wires actually there.
I honestly think that serverless is a lot less ambiguous and misleading than something like "cloud" which is completely abstract.
And for all those who disagree with "Serverless", come to Serverlessconf London (london.serverlessconf.io) and we can debate it there. In fact, would love to see everyone there!
We have dedicated many pages (and will dedicate more) explaining how/why serverless is different. Why we think it's superior (in some instances) to traditional technologies and how it can alleviate the burden that comes with managing traditional infrastructure (and current methods of implementing back ends for web applications).
The book is covering AWS and technologies such as Lambda, and API Gateway. These have already evolved as we began to write the book. I want to focus more on patterns and applications but we also need to introduce readers to these patterns and show how to actually put them together - so it's an interesting question of finding balance.
Amazon is a leader in this area right now but let's not use them. We can talk about Microsoft, IBM, or Google. They use "serverless" to describe their products. Google calls cloud functions a "serverless platform" and "serverless microservices" (https://cloud.google.com/functions/).
Azure functions talk about "processing events with serverless code" and so on. I only meant to use Amazon is an example because people are more familiar with their products.
Serverless is just a descriptor for these kinds of technologies and patterns.