AWS in particular seem to have a carefully refined technical sales/certification/advocacy channel whose main product is those fucking stupid architecture diagrams. Hello world service with $4000/mo. worth of geo-replicated backing databases, CloudWatch alarms, API Gateway instances, WAF etc.
But don't let it encourage you to think serverless has no value, or it can't be done portably or cheaply. It has its sweet spots just like everything else.
Reminds of something that was on the HN frontpage some month ago, where readers are not sure if it's a parody or not, because of the architecture you're required to deploy yourself to use this new "Perspective" product. Direct link to the architecture, that in the end serves the use case of generating a diagram of your AWS resources: https://d1.awsstatic.com/Solutions/Solutions%20Category%20Te...
Reading this made me remember that back in the day the AWS selling point was "here you can create virtual machines with few clicks and have it instantly instead of waiting 30 min for you colocated server to be ready" but now it seems to be "here is a bunch of random expensive tools, please, produce as much stuff as possible and share the word that having servers is bad™".
This field used to be inspiring, but now I see the ideia of having a server being sold as the plague and lots of negativity towards people who are good at servers. They are not seen as another human being but the "other".
Also I can't understand why one would prefer to pay that much for such complexity.
It seems unsustainable for me, not to mention the new generation being spoon fed that that is way to go makes me concerned about the future of open computing.
"Also I can't understand why one would prefer to pay that much for such complexity."
If there is one thing that dealing with AWS reps has taught me, it's that this was 100% by customers. I swear to god, AWS doesn't do anything without customers asking for it.
If you are wondering why products are build in AWS, it's because people wanted to give them money for this. Say what you want, but this isn't something are pushing on us. This is something "we" push on them to provide.
Your response made me smile. Glad to see there are still reasonable folks out there.
Working for a startup without a "resume-driven-development" CTO gave me the freedom to go "servermore" architecture with max flexibility.
For all the talk about resume driven development, I am hiring now, and will say that people who have solved their problems by learning more about Linux and such sound way more impressive than those who list out passing familiarity with a bunch of high level services. The first style of resume really stands out. The second is a dime a dozen.
To make an analogy, it's like hiring a carpenter based on the number of tools they have. NO. Show me your skill with a hammer and chisel, and I'll assume you can figure out the rest.
> not to mention the new generation being spoon fed that that is way to go
The new generation is always joining one cargo cult or another, that's why competent technical leadership is important. Remember when noSQL was the best thing since sliced bread?
Serverless can be a good option if you have large and unpredictable transient loads.
Like any architectural choice, you need to consider the tradeoffs and suitability for your use case. A TODO app probably doesn't need to be built with a serverless SOA.
But don't let it encourage you to think serverless has no value, or it can't be done portably or cheaply. It has its sweet spots just like everything else.