[ximm]

> have a theory that every major technology shift happened when one part of the stack collapsed with another.

If that was true, we would ultimately end up with a single layer. Instead I would say that major shifts happen when we move the boundaries between layers.

The author here proposes to replace servers by synced client-side data stores.

That is certainly a good idea for some applications, but it also comes with drawbacks. For example, it would be easier to avoid stale data, but it would be harder to enforce permissions.

[worthless-trash]

I feel like this is the "serverless" discussion all over again.

There was still a server, its just not YOUR server. In this case, there will still be servers, just maybe not something that you need to manage state on.

This misnaming creates endless conflict when trying to communicate this with hyper excited management who want to get on the latest trend.

Cant wait to be on the meeting and hearing: "We dont need servers when we migrate to client side data stores".

[TeMPOraL]

I think the management isn't hyper excited about naming - in fact, they couldn't care less for what the name means (it's just a buzzword). What they're excited about is what the thing does - which is, turn more capex into opex. With "cloud", we can subscribe to servers instead of owning them. With "serverless", we can subscribe directly to what servers do, without managing servers themselves. Etc.

[Diederich]

Recently, something quite rare happened. I needed to Xerox some paper documents. Well, such actions are rare today, but years ago, it was quite common to Xerox things.

Over time, the meaning of the word 'Xerox' changed. More specifically, it gained a new meaning. For a long time, Xerox only referred to a company named in 1961. Some time in the late 60s, it started to be used as a verb, and as I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, the word 'Xerox' was overwhelmingly used in its verb form.

Our society decided as a whole that it was ok for the noun Xerox to be used a verb. That's a normal and natural part of language development.

As others have noted, management doesn't care whether the serverless thing you want to use is running on servers or not. They care that they don't have to maintain servers themselves. CapEx vs OpEx and all that.

I agree that there could be some small hazard with the idea that, if I run my important thing in a 'serverless' fashion, then I don't have to associate all of the problems/challenges/concerns I have with 'servers' to my important thing.

It's an abstraction, and all abstractions are leaky.

If we're lucky, this abstraction will, on average, leak very little.