Real World Serverless with theburningmonk

In this episode, I spoke with Brian LeRoux, co-founder of begin.com and creator of the Architect framework. Brian is also an AWS Serverless Hero and is currently working on enhance.dev, an HTML-first full-stack web framework.In a wide-ranging conversation, we discussed:the Architect frameworkLambdalith vs. Single-purpose functionsBuilding a faster AWS SDK (aws-lite)Web componentsFunctionlessWASMInfra from code frameworks such as AmptLinks from the episode:AWS Lite SDKArchitect frameworkBeginEnhance frameworkThe LocalStack episodeThe LLRT episodeAmpt by Jeremy DalyMy serverless testing courseOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Waldemar Hummer, founder and CTO of LocalStack. We discussed what's new in the latest version of LocalStack and highlighted some of the most interesting additions.One particular highlight for me is the ability to identify IAM permission errors between direct service integrations. For example, when an EventBridge pipe cannot deliver a message to a SQS target. And the ability to use test runs to generate the necessary IAM permissions so they can be added to your Lambda functions.LocalStack v3 also allows running chaos experiments locally by adding random latency spikes, making an entire AWS region unavailable, or simulating DynamoDB throughput-exceeded errors.Lots of exciting new features in LocalStack v3! Waldemar gave us a live demo of some of these features. You can watch the episode on YouTube and watch the demos here.Links from the episode:My webinar with Waldemar after LocalStack v2LocalStack v3 announcementMy blog post on when to use Step Functions vs running everything in LambdaLocalStack is hiring!Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Ian Griffiths, a Technical Fellow at Endjin, a Microsoft MVP, and the author of O'Reilly's Programming C# 10.0.In this episode, we took a deep dive into Azure Functions, how it works and how it differs (significantly) from AWS Lambda.Links from the episode:Bye bye Azure Functions, hello Azure Container AppsWASI (WebAssembly system interface)EndjinIntroductions to Reactive Extensions for .NetOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Bob Hannent, the principal architect of DAZN's video playback and delivery system. This system is responsible for streaming live sporting events to millions of concurrent viewers.We discussed the many challenges that come with streaming live videos at scale. How to ensure uptime even when your CDN partners suffer an outage. And how best to ensure the best playback experience for your customers across dozens of different platforms.There's a lot to learn from this conversation. Honestly, I'm amazed by how much thought and engineering have gone into delivering those bytes from the stadiums to the customers.And when you can push both AWS and CDN providers to their limits, every engineering decision has to be thought through carefully.Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Richard Davison, the creator of the new LLRT (Low Latency Runtime) for Lambda. We talked about the motivation for a specialised JavaScript runtime for Lambda, how it achieves the insane cold start time and the trade-offs they had to make.Links from the episode:GitHub repo for LLRTAPI compatibility listQuickJs engineOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Jack Ellis, who is a co-founder of Fathom. We into the cost optimizations that he used to save Fathom $100k/year on their AWS bill.Links from the episode:Fathom's technical blogJack's personal pageJack's newsletterOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Mark White, who is a principal engineer at Dunelm, a leading home furnishing retailer in the UK.We talked about Dunelm's journey from on-premise infrastructure to serverless and how they stayed agile while migrating their systems to this new paradigm safely.We discussed the challenges of shifting the engineering culture and habits to fit the constraints and opportunities that serverless technologies offer. And we recounted Dunelm's success and failure stories along the way.Links from the episode:Dunelm's Engineering blogEp77 Microfrontends with Luca MezzaliraUnleashing The Power Of Frontend Distributed Systems With AWSOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Austen Collins, founder and CEO of Serverless Inc. about the upcoming release of Serverless Framework v4.We talked about the origin of the Serverless Framework and the challenges it faces. We discussed the rationale behind the upcoming changes in v4. Including the ability to easily switch between containers and Lambda functions as the deployment target, and the revenue share model for Extensions.Links from the episode:* Serverless v4 announcement post* HashiCorp's license change announcement* Ep87 with Anton Babenko on the Terraform pricing change* Ep88 with AJ Stuyvenberg on Lambda cold start mistakes* State of Serverless report 2023Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Sam Williams about his drive for work-life balance and discussed his experience of building AI-powered apps using serverless technologies.Links from the episode:Sam's YouTube channelOpenAI's Vision APIsmol-developerEpisode 92 with Shawn WangProduction-Ready Serverless workshopSam's courseLuc van Donkersgoed's article on standing on the shoulder of giantsOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Shawn Wang, who coined the term "AI Engineer" as a new title for engineers who are building the chains and agents that powers AI applications. This is likely to be the highest-demand engineering job of the decade.We talked about the evolution of software development and how AI is changing everything. And why ambitious developers should attach themselves to AI and build thought leadership in this space.We also touched on topics such as AGI (artificial general intelligence), and talked about Shawn's "smol-developer" project, which lets you bootstrap entire projects using prompt engineering.If you want to see Shawn's short demo of smol-developer, then you can watch the episode on YouTube here.Links from the episode:Latent SpaceRise of the AI engineer articleOpenAI dev day keynoteOpenAI's Vision APIsmol-developerAI Engineer summit day 1AI Engineer summit day 2My post on orchestration vs choreographyOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Patrick deBois, who is known as the "father of DevOps" as he coined the term "DevOps" in 2009.In a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about the evolution of DevOps, what it means in 2023 and how it related to "Platform Engineering".We also talked about AI, how AI technologies are impacting software development, and what developers can do to prepare themselves for what is to come.Links from the episode:Patrick’s YouTube channelPatrick's Twitter profilePatrick's LinkedIn profileEp81 with Matt Carey on LangChain and testing AI applicationsBlog post on testing GenAI applicationsEp84 with Charity Majors on Observability, OTEL, and DevOpsPatrick's course on learning LLM, from dev, sec and ops perspectiveOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Hieu Do, who is a Solution Architect at FPT Software in Vietnam. As a side project, he built a hotel booking system for a friend using entirely serverless technologies.He shared his experience and learnings from building this system and how he was able to keep the cost down. After running the system for a year, the system only costs an average of $0.82 per month and serves over 3000 users per day.There are some useful tips that everyone can apply. Such as reducing the cost of API Gateway by cutting out the OPTION requests associated with CORS. Or looking out for CloudWatch costs when using 3rd party services that poll CloudWatch data, such as NewRelic.Links from the episode:Hieu's article on running a serverless hotel booking system for a yearPuppeteerChrome Lambda LayerVendia serverless-express frameworkHieu's Linkedin profile-----For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Sandro Volpicella, who is a platform lead at Hashnode, a fully serverless blogging platform. He is also the co-author of AWS Fundamentals (https://awsfundamentals.com).We explored Hashnode's architecture and went deep into its caching strategy, which is a crucial ingredient of a scalable and performant blogging platform.Links from the episode:Hashnode's overall architectureAWS FundamentalsCloudWatch BookStellateUpstashHow Hashnode implements the user feedOctoLenseServerlessQChoosing a database for serverless applications You can find Sandro on X as @sandro_vol-----For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with AJ Stuyvenberg, who is an AWS Hero and staff engineer at Datadog. We discussed the findings from the latest state of serverless report and spoke about Lambda cold starts at length. AJ has done some incredible research into Lambda cold starts and shared the 4 biggest mistakes people make regarding Lambda cold starts.If you care about getting the best performance for your Lambda functions and minimizing cold starts, then this is the episode for you!Links from the episode:State of Serverless reportCorey Quinn's 17 ways to run containers on AWSCorey Quinn's 17 more ways to run containersAJ’s Linkedin profileAJ's re:invent session (COM305)AJ's Twitch streamAJ's post on Lambda proactive initialisationMichael Hart’s post on Lambda using full CPU during init You can find AJ on X as @astuyve-----For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Anton Babenko, who is an AWS Community Hero and creator of the Serverless.TF framework. We spoke at length about serverless development with Terraform and the problems that Serverless.TF aims to solve. We also discussed the recent seismic split in the Terraform community, with HashiCorp's license change and the initiation of the OpenTofu movement. Anton didn't hold back on his feelings about the oversized reaction to HashiCorp's announcement, and I agree with him!Links from the episode:* Serverless.TF framework* Serverless.TF example for Lambda* Anton's various other projects* Hire Anton for consulting engagements* HashiCorp's license change announcement* OpenTofuYou can find Anton on X as @antonbabenko-----For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Ran Isenberg, who is an AWS Serverless Hero and Principal Software Architect at CyberArk. Amongst other things, we talked about platform engineering at CyberArk, how they adopted CDK and how they approach testing and tenant isolations.Links from the episode:* Ran's blog* Open positions at CyberArk* cdk-nag* Ran's AWS Lambda cookbook* See Ran speak at re:Invent, session OPN305* My approach towards serverless testing* My course on serverless testing* Episode 85 with Matt Bonig about CDK dos & don'tsYou can find Ran on X as @IsenbergRan-----For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Matthew Bonig, who is an AWS DevTools Hero and co-author of The CDK Book.We talked about the Dos and Don'ts of CDK, and Matthew shared some tips on testing and how to organize your CDK project.Links from the episode:The CDK BookAdvanced CDK CourseConstruct HubCDK PatternsCDK Community Survey 2023cdk.devWing LangAmptCDK Days track 1CDK Days track 2You can find Matthew on X as @mattbonig.-----For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Charity Majors, who is the co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb, a popular observability platform.We had a wide-ranging conversation about Parse (and its acquisition by Facebook), observability, devops and why you should deploy on Fridays (but you still need to apply good engineering sense!).Links from the episode:Honeycomb Honeycomb blogHoneycomb's AI-powered query assistantOpenTelemetryYou can find Charity on X as @mipsytipsy.-----For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Gerard Sans, who is a Google Developer Expert and my co-author for the AppSync Masterclass.We talked about Google's new AI platform, what it entails and how Google's AI offerings compare to OpenAI. For example, what can you do with Bard and Duet AI and why one might consider using them instead of ChatGPT or CoPilot. We discussed Midjourney vs. Stable Diffusion, and how platforms need to be more responsible with their AI offerings. And we also touched on the idea of AI agents and once again, LangChain was part of the conversation.You can also watch this episode on YouTube here and see Gerard's slides and demos.Links from the episode:Google's MakerSuite announcementAI for Google WorkspaceStable DiffusionStable Diffusion's new DreamBooth featureAdobe FireflyMidjourneyMidjourney's new inpainting featureHow ElevenLabs's voice cloning made me sound ScottishGoogle BardAnthropic Claude 2Ep81: AI development with LangChain with Matt CareyYou can find Gerard on X as @gerardsans.-----For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

In this episode, I spoke with Heitor Lessa, who is a principal solution architect at AWS that specializes in serverless. He's also the man behind the popular AWS Lambda Powertools project which is available in a number of languages.We talked about the history of the Lambda Powertools project, and the challenges and learnings from building in public. And Heitor shared the public roadmap for the Lambda Powertools and announced some exciting features that are going to be available soon.Additionally, we also discussed the trade-offs of monolithic Lambda functions, aka "fat functions", and why Heitor prefers them nowadays. And we talked about Lambda Layers and when it's a good idea to use them. Hint: You shouldn't use Lambda Layers as a replacement for package managers such as NPM.You can also watch this episode on YouTube here, and see the code samples that Heitor shared during the episode.Links from the episode:Lambda Powertools RoadmapLambda Powertools discord My post on when to use Lambda LayersYou can find Heitor on X as @heitor_lessa and his LinkedIn profile here.For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please subscribe to the channel and follow me on X as @theburningmonk.And if you're hungry for more insights, best practices, and invaluable tips on building serverless apps, make sure to subscribe to our free newsletter and elevate your serverless game! https://theburningmonk.com/subscribeOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0