Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by robotresearcher 3628 days ago
Sure, I get it. But we already have that idea.

The whole idea of a server is to abstract away the details of the upstream computer and its software stack, so the user can think of it only as a provider of an abstract service. The irrelevance of their implementation as a host, VM, box, rack of boxes, pool of quantum foam, string and sparkles, is already built into the concept.

We all know that there's no unique process that is http://amazon.com. It's a service, provided by a (vast distributed) server.

1 comments

You use "server" to mean "a vast array of servers"? I don't think I've heard that before.
I'd say that http://amazon.com is the address of Amazon's web server, yes. Does that sound wrong?
I don't think I have ever heard anybody use "server" to mean "lots of servers". Perhaps "web site" or "service" or "cluster" or even "load balancers" depending on whether they want to talk about what they provide or what does the providing.