We spoke with Matt Biilmann, CEO and co-founder of Netlify about Jamstack and why it is such a strong stack for the serverless model. Discover what some of the current challenges are for serverless models, how to overcome them, and see what the future holds.
JAXenter: You’ve been talking about Jamstack for a long time now, what makes it such a strong stack for the serverless model?
Matt Biilmann: From the onset, Jamstack represented an approach to web development where the traditional concept of “my server” went away and where the stack moved up a level. When serverless functions started emerging, they instantly felt like a really compelling part of the Jamstack, since they embodied the same shift in the level of abstraction, from working with servers, Linux distributions, system packages, etc, to just writing code and then having it run.
Jamstack allows developers to decouple the web presentation layer from the backend logic, and often this logic becomes a great fit for a serverless approach.
SEE ALSO: Do we really need this JAMstack thing? And what even is it?
The vision of Jamstack has always been to pre-render whatever you can and then pull any dynamic data that you need. One of the core tenets of Jamstack is the use of reusable APIs, which can just as easily be a serverless function written as an API endpoint. That means a frontend developer can now create more of the experience and easily call on backend services without coordinating across DevOps and backend teams or provisioning servers and APIs.
Most importantly, Jamstack platforms like Netlify allow you to bring the complete development workflow together in one place—where the entire app, including serverless capabilities, can be managed and deployed from a single Git repo.
Jamstack and serverless share the idea that developers should be able to focus on building experiences without having to worry about operations and infrastructure provisioning. Both start with the emphasis on developer experience and developer productivity which make the two natural companions. When managed from a single platform like Netlify, it means that you can apply a frontend workflow to everything, using advanced features like instant rollbacks, easily shareable previews, split testing, and more across both the front-end and serverless backend parts of your app.
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