Serverless backend hosting without idle costs – open-source

Shorlabs just launched as an open‑source “Vercel for the backend,” promising no idle costs and “deploy without infrastructure headaches.” It rides Amazon’s cloud (AWS Lambda) so you pay only when your code runs, and it ships shiny perks like one‑click deploys, automatic Python/Node detection, logs, and a free subdomain. The repo is up on GitHub, and the pitch is simple: ship backends fast, no server babysitting.

But the comment section turned into a Saturday night cage match. One camp rolled their eyes: “Why not just use AWS’s own tools?” User mlhpdx dropped the first gauntlet with “Why would I use this rather than ‘sam build && sam deploy’?” (SAM = Amazon’s template system for serverless). Another voice, ramblurr, questioned the whole premise: “In my experience Lambda is a hassle,” then asked who this is even for and whether it beats Amplify (Amazon’s official toolchain). The crowd also flagged the long README—AWS keys, IAM (permissions), Docker, the works—joking that “one‑click” sure looks like a 12‑step ritual. And for dessert, add‑sub‑mul‑div lobbed a spicy allegation about new accounts spamming the thread, sparking accusations of astroturfing. The memes wrote themselves: “Lambda with lipstick,” “SAM vs Shorlabs Thunderdome,” and “Zero idle, maximum drama.”