Serverless computing has been promised as the next big thing™ in computing. There are many advantages: not needing to build and manage complex backend code, and granular billing per invocation means that you only pay for what you use. Many of these systems have adopted workflow systems (e.g., AWS Step Functions, GitHub Actions) on top of batch requests. Unfortunately, the systems to date have serious limitations: they’re locked into cumbersome proprietary APIs, have a finite number of integrations, and often don’t handle partial failure elegantly (e.g., can leave a database in an inconsistent state if something goes wrong in another step). Furthermore, many of the compute offerings today lock developers into an ecosystem, making it difficult to switch to other solutions in the future.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://fission.codes/blog/cod-summit-2023-foundations-for-open-world-compute/