Episode #50: Static First Using Serverless Front-ends with Guillermo Rauch

this episode of service chats is sponsored by Amazon Web Services and stacker e on today's episode I speak with guillermo rauch about building static first using service front ends this is service chats episode number 50 [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hi everyone i'm jeremy daley and this is

service chats today I'm speaking with guillermo rauch hey Guillermo thanks for joining me hey thanks for having me so you are the CEO of averse cell which was formerly Zeit so I'd love it if you could tell the listeners a little bit about yourself your background and what vers L is all about yeah I'm the CEO and co creator of Nijs which is the react framework for front-end development and jam set development and verse L is a

platform for deploying projects like an XJS and many other frameworks and versatile focuses on making the lives front-end developers really really easy allowing them to push their pages to our edge network and have a very delightful serverless development experience yeah so that's what I want to talk to you about today so the last time I think we saw each other in person was back in was it back in Milan I think right yeah almost two years ago at this point or maybe it was last year I don't even remember in quarantine has lasted so

long at this point yeah I can't keep track of time um but the last time I saw you you know I was speaking about this idea where I felt like serverless was getting harder and harder and harder and that was or it seems to be the the wrong approach right we want service to become easier right and this is something where I think this idea of maybe I think you call it front end server list or service front end is is where you're trying to

go with ver cell and I'd love to just get your thoughts on that just that that complexity that we're we're now pushing towards the back end and where you're trying to go with the front end yeah yeah I think you nailed it I think the serverless world is big and complicated I think when we first met it we'd really connected on this idea of like what is even the right definition of it right now we were both presenting on Milan trying to give a definition for it and and it's a pretty silly game to play right to try to even like fight that

fight and and when I think about serverless I think about wanting to give people a very good recipe for for leveraging that kind of technology and I think anything that relates to service or infrastructure really needs to disappear it has to be all about letting people focus on their products focus on their pages focusing on the things that they're publishing to the Internet and that's why front-end really is a place where I think all the server let's

action is happening and the techniques and technologies that were using in some ways are the original server lists because much of what we're doing today is this idea of taking pages generating them aesthetically and putting them at the edge which means you know to me the most fundamental serverless technology out there is a CDN right like when they've been around for a long time even they predate a lot of the serverless movement and yet they had that critical

idea that there is no management to do that it accelerates you obviously because it's putting your content next to your customers and the bit in the very technology that this accelerates is the front end right so I think what we're about to see is that a lot of what we've been advocating for in the service world he's really starting to become much much of a reality with front-end