Around the internet, I have regularly been seeing references to serverless, cloud functions, cloud workers, Cloudflare workers, Netlify functions etc. but I’ve never fully understood them. Now, I understand them but I am struggling to think of “real-world” use-cases for where our  clients are concerned.

I can see the appeal for personal projects, side projects and niche clients and uses where quick responses & data manipulation is required. I would love to see a case study or two where they have been used for huge government organisations or NGOs - if you have an example please do  let me know.

The following post is my experience with  Cloudflare Workers. However, the theory iIve been lead to believe, is very much the same no matter what service you use.

So what are they?

Serverless does not mean no server, there is always a server somewhere in the chain. What it does mean is that you don’t have to worry about the server configuration, it just “works”.

It’s amazing what a full circle we’ve come. When I started web dev cPanel was all the rage - you would create a site, FTP your files and and your site would be live. Then DigitalOcean came on the scene, followed by plenty of other baremetal & VPS providers where you would configure the server yourself. Docker then appeared, where you commanded what your server should be and do and now we are back to no configuration.

One thing that really helped me understand about Serverless was  Episode 224 of Syntax FM. Wes and Scott must have helped, as I listened to this last Friday and understood it all on Monday.

#serverless