Daemon processes (100% software) also get called "servers".

In an old job, in an effort to disambiguate, I would always use "computer" to mean hardware (losing battle).

I'm not sure that distinction is clear. For example, in AWS Lambda, you still have issues like functions being "warm" or not, and people write code specifically to handle that. Meanwhile, nowadays you can acquire and configure even dedicated machines using just code.

If you have to configure a machine, even in code, then you aren't "serverless". To me, serverless means that you do not manage the machines or even have direct access to them.

What's a machine? :) A dedicated server sure is, but a VPS? An Heroku Dyno? What's the line?

> What's a machine?

I would say "machine" means the hardware and/or the operating system of the "server" (which is a fancy word for "computer").

The "and/or" part being very important!

Fair points. I'd say it's as clear as 'middleware'. When you are trying to get to the limits of performance (or just optimizing), then you tend to start thinking about the platform it runs on.

This is the problem with most abstractions in IT I guess - they're beautiful and clean until reality bites.

Wouldn't that definition apply to services like Heroku as well though?

For sure.