[TotoHorner]

A web server will take requests and serve them.

The web server does this by looking at the request and then running a certain set of instructions on how to serve the request.

Rather than having to build the web server, serverless is a service where you can just give the serverless provider the instructions and they will run them for you.

[shreythecray]

How would you explain to them what a web server is? Same for request or server. What type of instructions are you referring to?

[TotoHorner]

Not sure how many middle schoolers you've talked to recently, but they're quite tech savvy. They're all used to google docs, tik tok, bereal, and whatever else they're using.

I'd be surprised if they didn't know what a server is. It's become common lexicon to say "Oh that website's servers are down".

Maybe bring up that time Roblox's servers were down for 72 hours or whatever.

But yeah so, your browser sends a request to the website's servers.

The servers run code (just instructions written so that a computer can understand) to complete that request.

[zenosmosis]

True, and if they play online video games, they probably know as well.