Learning curve complexity vs operational complexity

“Learning-curve complexity is not equivalent to operating friction and complexity.” — Joe Emison

I’ve focused in my last few emails on the upfront learning curve for serverless and how better education and tooling is needed in order to increase the rate of adoption.

But it’s worth remembering the benefits you’re trading off this learning investment for. I wrote this article back in 2018 listing 30 (mostly operational) concerns that serverless obviates when compared to a server/container-based application. These are all still very relevant today and there are a few items I could add in (e.g. not having to rework slow SQL queries if using DynamoDB).

Some of these items may get dismissed as “later” concerns, but if you’re in the business of getting to production fast, then “later” could be within a month or two.

So while serverless still has some way to go to become more approachable for developers, once you’ve invested the time in learning, all these operational benefits are here for you today.

— Paul

P.S. If you’re a startup or small team thinking about building a serverless app on AWS, I have some availability over next month to help you out (up to last week of June). How I can help:

• Serverless adoption considerations
• Architecture design workshop
• DevOps setup: AWS multi-acct org, CD pipelines
• Resolving issues in existing system or team delivery processes
• Ad-hoc dev team guidance

More details on my services here. Just reply to this email if you’re interested.