[benjaminjosephw]

This is also true for basically all "cloud" services. There's no real innovation, just a return to mainframes and timesharing with a massive amount of marketing momentum to convince everyone that this is a step forwards. But hey, we all drank the Kool-Aid.

[jeffreyrogers]

Maybe there's no technological innovation, but they do make things a lot easier. I set up my own email server once (for sending mail from a webapp) and after doing that once I'm happy to use mailgun from now on (it is non trivial to configure a mail server to deliver mail to all major email providers without getting flagged as spam).

Sometimes avoiding the cloud services is the right decision, and I think many architectures are overly complicated based on current and prospective performance requirements (cargo cult infrastructure/architecture), but used properly they save many thousands of hours of engineering time.

[pudmaidai]

Yeah, ok, maybe you’re glossing over the immense difference that there is between what could be done on a mainframe vs what a Lambda allows, including all complementary services like per-second billing and granular permissions and logging. Now tell me that this is just the same thing as “mainframes” from the 80s.