Who Let the Servers Out? Tracing the Roots of Serverless Tech

Table of contents

Introduction

What a time to be alive! In just a few years, we’ve witnessed history so many times that it’s honestly becoming exhausting. From a global pandemic to relentless wars and the rather bizarre spectacle of U.S. politics it’s like living in a non-stop satirical comedy. Now, you might be wondering, “Why the heck is he talking about this? Aren’t we here to talk tech and throw around cool buzzwords?” Well, patience, my friend. The more I write, the better it is for SEO.

But let’s circle back to the original point I was trying to make. The thing that baffles me is this whole ‘us vs. them’ mentality. And for some reason, it got me thinking about serverless infrastructure and why it’s so divisive. Why does everyone have an opinion on how their over-engineered todo app should be built, deployed, and what patterns it should follow?

Well, dear reader, I must admit, I am a bit of a coward. Yes, call me that, but I don’t really have an opinion, same for your favorite IDE or the theme you use on your overly bloated zsh shell.

Context is key. Don’t take a knife to a gunfight. If you’re running a small startup, serverless might work for you sometimes. If your startup is medium-sized and well-funded, a solid monolith could be a better fit. It’s dependable and can adapt into microservices if needed. But, hold off on microservices unless your company is large and needs to scale quickly.

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s dive into the nitty-gritty of serverless architecture and explore how it really works in practice.