This document discusses the shift from traditional server-based applications to serverless architectures in cloud computing. It notes that in pre-cloud days, developers had to manage servers, provision resources, plan for scaling and availability, and deal with maintenance, which required spending on hardware and staffing. The cloud reduced these burdens by providing on-demand virtual machines and abstracting away the hardware. Serverless computing takes this further by allowing developers to run code without managing servers or infrastructure, paying only for the resources required to run their code. It provides examples of scenarios well-suited for serverless computing and walks through building a sample serverless application and linking it to cloud APIs and services.