The Bob Bloom Show

#25 - The Seven Things About Serverless That I Think
May 01, 2025
10:03
I have a rather unique viewpoint of serverless in general, and of PHP serverless in particular. 

A viewpoint that I express in my podcasts, and in my PHP Serverless Project. 

I have not yet explicitly expressed this viewpoint in one concise podcast, so I wanted to do so now. In this episode, I enumerate the seven things about serverless that I think.


1) One, "serverless" is a bullshit marketing term, denoting, neither an actual technology nor actual technological processes.

2) "Serverless" is at best a placeholder term for features.

3) The two dominant features are server abstraction and scale.

4) Since serverless denotes features, any technology or platform that delivers server abstraction and or scale are relevant to serverless.

5) Serverless platforms and technologies are not fungible.

6) Since serverless platforms and technologies are not fungible, it is important to understand what use cases any given platform or technology satisfies.

7) Two common characteristics of serverless platforms are. Variably priced, and unable to SSH.

Attributions
Beethoven's Symphony No. 1, Op.21:

Beethoven's Symphony No.9, Op.125:

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The Bob Bloom Show comes to you thanks to my wonderful, and intrepid, sponsors of my PHP Serverless Project, which includes this podcast.
They took a chance on me, to benefit our worldwide PHP Community!
Luke Galea is a veteran technology leader who began coding professionally during the dot-com boom. While Ruby, Elixir, and Erlang are his tools of choice, PHP has remained a constant thread throughout his two-decade career spanning healthcare, dating, nutrition coaching, education, and workforce management. His journey includes scaling high volume consumer facing sites HotOrNot and Ashley Madison where PHP powered the core infrastructure. Even when working with other technologies, Luke has consistently leveraged PHP for marketing technology, community forums, and developer resources. A committed community builder, he founded Toronto's Erlang user group and actively supports the Toronto Elixir and GTA PHP communities. Currently focused on leadership coaching and technology advisory, Luke loves solving hard problems with smart people. Call him if you want to riff on something awesome.
Luke Galea
Restream.io subscription sponsor
Luke Galea is a veteran technology leader who began coding professionally during the dot-com boom. While Ruby, Elixir, and Erlang are his tools of choice, PHP has remained a constant thread throughout his two-decade career spanning healthcare, dating, nutrition coaching, education, and workforce management. His journey includes scaling high volume consumer facing sites HotOrNot and Ashley Madison where PHP powered the core infrastructure. Even when working with other technologies, Luke has consistently leveraged PHP for marketing technology, community forums, and developer resources. A committed community builder, he founded Toronto's Erlang user group and actively supports the Toronto Elixir and GTA PHP communities. Currently focused on leadership coaching and technology advisory, Luke loves solving hard problems with smart people. Call him if you want to riff on something awesome.
(Luke Galea's website)
Tolga Ercan is an accomplished technology executive with over two decades of experience leading high-performing engineering organizations across SaaS, fintech, and consumer technology sectors. He currently serves as Director of Engineering at Vetster, a veterinary telehealth platform redefining access to pet care through innovative digital solutions. Tolga has built a career scaling engineering teams, driving cloud migration strategies, and delivering resilient, scalable systems. His leadership experience includes senior roles at Instagram, Edmunds, and early-stage startups, where he has consistently championed technical excellence, operational efficiency, and cultural growth. He has also leveraged technologies such as Laravel to build and scale modern, customer-facing applications in startup environments, applying best practices in software architecture and agile development. As a supporter of the open source community, Tolga believes in the importance of open innovation and actively backs initiatives that advance software transparency, interoperability, and access. He is committed to fostering the future of technology through mentorship, organizational leadership, and community engagement.
Tolga Ercan
Basecamp subscription sponsor
Tolga Ercan is an accomplished technology executive with over two decades of experience leading high-performing engineering organizations across SaaS, fintech, and consumer technology sectors. He currently serves as Director of Engineering at Vetster, a veterinary telehealth platform redefining access to pet care through innovative digital solutions. Tolga has built a career scaling engineering teams, driving cloud migration strategies, and delivering resilient, scalable systems. His leadership experience includes senior roles at Instagram, Edmunds, and early-stage startups, where he has consistently championed technical excellence, operational efficiency, and cultural growth. He has also leveraged technologies such as Laravel to build and scale modern, customer-facing applications in startup environments, applying best practices in software architecture and agile development. As a supporter of the open source community, Tolga believes in the importance of open innovation and actively backs initiatives that advance software transparency, interoperability, and access. He is committed to fostering the future of technology through mentorship, organizational leadership, and community engagement.
(Tolga Ercan's website)