A podcast where we talk about real-world use of Serverless technologies from engineers who work with them day-to-day. We will discuss use cases, why they chose serverless and the pain points and challenges they face. If you want to know what it's REALLY like to work with serverless, this is the show for you.
In this episode, I spoke with Matt Carey, founding AI engineer at StackOne, founder of AI Demo Days and member of the OpenUK AI Advisory Board.Everyone needs a friend who works in AI to help them filter the AI news and get the signals from the noise. Matt is that friend for me!We discussed AI agents, MCP, and the challenges of AI benchmarks, which help explain the disconnect between the benchmark results and the anecdotal experiences of AI users, such as myself.Links from the episode:Google's whitepaper on AI agentsAnthropic Building Effective AI AgentsSimon Willison on XThorsten Ball's Joy & Curiosity newsletterAI Demo DaysMCP has a prompt injection problemOpening 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 visualise and troubleshoot event-driven architectures end-to-end and quickly identify problems such as missing IAM permission.Lots of exciting new features in LocalStack v4!Links from the episode:My conversation with Waldemar after LocalStack v3LocalStack v4 announcementMy blog post on when to use Step Functions vs running everything in LambdaOpening 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 Khawaja Shams, co-founder of Momento, about cell-based architectures and how it allows Momento to scale to millions of transactions per second (TPS) while maintaining a healthy blast radius within their multi-tenant system.Links from the episode:MomentoKhawaja on XKhawaja on LinkedInBelieve In Serverless communityOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.
In this episode, I spoke with Aniket Mitra, founder of CW, to learn more about knowledge graphs and how they are making a comeback in the era of AI and LLMs.Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.
In this episode, I spoke with Alex Bouchard, co-founder and CTO of Hookdeck, to learn more about Hookdeck and how it differs from Amazon EventBridge.This episode contains a live demo of Hookdeck, for the best viewing experience, please watch the recording on YouTube here.Alex gave me a demo of Hookdeck, which has some nice features for addressing common developer experience problems with EventBridge. For example:Deliver events to local targetsAudit history of event deliveriesIssues page of failed event deliveriesReplay failed eventsLinks from the episode: Check out HookdeckOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.
In this episode, I spoke with David Boyne, the creator of EventCatalog, to learn more about the most common challenges with Event-Driven Architectures and how EventCatalog can solve the governance problem - how events are versioned, schema'd, discovered and tested.This episode includes a short demo of EventCatalog, if you want to see the demo in action, then check out the video version on YouTube here.Links from the episode:EventCatalogWinglangOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.
Thank you to Momento for supporting this episode. Momento's real-time data platform empowers developers to build innovative products faster and more reliably than ever before. Visit gomomento.co/theburningmonk for more information.In this episode, I spoke with Matthieu Napoli about the Bref framework for developing serverless applications in PHP - how it works, why PHP and how it compares with Laravel Vapor.This episode includes a short demo of Bref, if you want to see the demo in action, then check out the video version on YouTube here.Links from the episode:Bref frameworkOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.
Thank you to Hookdeck for sponsoring this episode. If you're looking to level-up your event-driven architecture, then check out their serverless event gateway at hookdeck.com/theburningmonk and help support this channel.James Eastham is a developer advocate at Datadog and co-author of "Crafting Lambda Functions in Rust". In this episode, we dive into writing Lambda functions in Rust and why you should invest in learning Rust.Links from the episode:NSA whitepaper on memory safetyJulian Wood's Lambda internals talk at re:Invent 2022Jame's YouTube channelCrafting Lambda Functions in RustEp106 on middy with Luciano MamminoEp97 on LLRT (the superfast JavaScript runtime for Lambda)Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.
Thank you to Momento for supporting this episode. Momento's real-time data platform empowers developers to build innovative products faster and more reliably than ever before. Visit gomomento.co/theburningmonk for more information.I spoke with Andrew Brown, renowned educator in the cloud space, to get his take on how cloud learners can break into the cloud and forge a successful career.Links from the episode:Andrew's paid coursesAndrew's free coursesAndrew's AWS examplesOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Thank you to Hookdeck for sponsoring this episode. If you're looking to level-up your event-driven architecture, then check out their serverless event gateway at hookdeck.com/theburningmonk and help support this channel.AWS Serverless Hero Luciano Mammino shares the history of Middy, the popular middleware engine for AWS Lambda functions; why he's sold on writing Lambda functions in Rust and why you should too!Links from the episode:AWS Bites channelMiddyHow to sponsor MiddyCrafting Lambda Functions in RustEasy mode RustUsing Node.js ES modules and top-level await in AWS LambdaUsing Middy with TypescriptEp97 on LLRT (the superfast JavaScript runtime for Lambda)Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Thank you to Momento for supporting this episode. Momento's real-time data platform empowers developers to build innovative products faster and more reliably than ever before. Visit gomomento.co/theburningmonk for more information.David Behroozi, a 15-year Amazon veteran, tells us the inception story of Amazon Cognito and the cheat code for succeeding at AWS.He also gave us a demo of Speedrun, his latest project since leaving Amazon. It turns your GitHub markdown into executable blocks of code that remember your context (e.g. AWS account and region) so your runbook can be executed right from the markdown.I recommend watching the episode on YouTube so you can see the full demo: https://youtu.be/nhWYlzb8mSALinks from the episode:David's LinkedIn profileDavid's Twitter profileLearn more about SpeedrunDavid's blogHow to Securely let Frontend Apps to Directly Access AWS servicesOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Thank you to Hookdeck for sponsoring this episode. If you're looking to level-up your event-driven architecture, then check out their serverless event gateway at hookdeck.com/theburningmonk and help support this podcast.Thomas Nixon, CTO of Baseline, shares stories from the trenches about the challenges of adopting serverless technologies.He gave us a demo of Baseline.js, a new serverless development framework that captures the many hard-learned lessons his team has made in the last six years.Think Amplify, but you own the source code and can easily customize things to suit your needs. I recommend watching the episode on YouTube so you can see the full demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6r8M8E_5n4Links from the episode:Getting started with Baseline.jsBaseline's Github repoThomas' LinkedIn profileOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Allen Helton on being an enabler, building communities, and is serverless dead?Links from the episode:Help Olivia's Fight Against Leukemia!Believe In Serverless communityReady, Set, Cloud!Momento, serverless cacheEp102: Peek behind the curtains of the AWS Heroes & Community Builders programmes, ft. Farrah CampbellOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Take a peek behind the AWS Heroes and Community Builders programmes with Farrah Campbell, who was a former AWS hero turned AWS employee. Nowadays, Farrah heads up both the AWS Heroes and Community Builders programmes.Links from the episode: How to become an AWS hero by Danielle HeberlingS3 no longer charges for unauthorized requests AWS Heroes directoryAWS Community Builders directoryOpening 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 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 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
In this episode, I spoke with Matt Carey, who's a senior engineer at Aleios, a premium AWS consultant that focuses on serverless technologies.The focus of our conversation was LangChain, Matt explained what it is and demoed some AI applications that he has developed with LangChain. Such as the popular Quivr app and Code Review GPT. If you want to see the demos in their full glory, then please go to YouTube and watch the episode here.We talked about some common challenges with AI development, such as testing, and how Matt and his team have developed a novel approach for dealing with the non-deterministic nature of these applications.Links from the episode:* Quivr* Code Review GPT* LangChain docs* PrivateGPT* Theodo's OrionTools* Blog on testing Gen AI applications* GenAI days eventsYou can find Matt on X as @mattzcarey and his LinkedIn profile here. You can also learn more about Aleios and their work at https://www.aleios.com. 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 Randall Hunt, who's the VP of Cloud Strategy and Innovation at Caylent and had previously worked at Vendia, Facebook AI, AWS and SpaceX.We talked about AWS Bedrock, what is it and how it works and saw a demo of a simple AI application built with Bedrock and LangChain. Randall explained the advantages of using Bedrock and why tales of AWS's supposedly weakness in AI are far-fetched.I had a lot of fun talking to Randall and learnt a lot from the conversation and I hope you will too. This episode includes some live demo, which is best enjoyed if you watch the episode on YouTube here.Links from the episode:The "Attention is all you need" whitepaper from 2017OWASP top 10 for LLM applicationsPinecone vector database for AIMomento announced its upcoming serverless vector database AWS re:Inforce 2023 talk on data security with BedrockCaylent's career pageFor 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!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 caught up with Ben Kehoe, who is an AWS Serverless Hero and one of the earliest adopters of serverless technologies.In a wide-ranging conversation, we discussed many topics around serverless and AI, including:The natural evolution of marketing terms and the need to focus on specific functional characteristics rather than defending the term. For example, including of arguing about what "serverless" means, we should instead talk about "pay-per-use".AWS should focus DX around the core service (e.g. CloudFormation) rather than trying to find client-side solutions by adding workarounds in SAM, CDK, etc.These client-side answers have a higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Developers often don't see the increased TCO they are taking on, but when things break, it's a problem.Developers put too much emphasis on author time benefits and not enough on runtime and operational time costs. They should be more thoughtful about the operational time cost.The “infrastructure from code” movement is taking burdens off the developer but leaving them with the developer's business, which is a bad thing.Developers often have a hard time separating delivering business value vs. coding.As an industry, a flawed narrative has emerged that developers are somehow special within an organisation and that it's OK for them to ignore their responsibilities to security if there is friction in the process.Ai has the potential to impede human growth as the current AI systems are not designed to generate new ideas and challenge the status quo. “an AI generator that is trained on modernist art would never invent post-modernism”.Links from the episode:The meaning(lessness) of serverlessServerless is a state of mindThe serverless spectrumEp16 - Serverless at iRobot with Ben KehoeFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow me on Twitter as @theburningmonk and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 Eduard Bargues, who is a Principal Engineer at Ohpen, a cloud-native open banking platform.We talked about Ohpen's migration from EC2 to a mix of Fargate and Lambda, and along the way, we touched on many topics:migration patternsthe "serverless-first" mindsethow to choose when to use Lambda vs Fargatewhy monolith functions are painful and should be avoidedrecommendations and pitfallswhy you should build a DX teamWe also talked about how being cloud-agnostic makes you use the cloud in a way that is inefficient and creates many layers of unnecessary abstraction layers in your architecture, which Eduard calls "legacy lock-in"!We talked about their event-driven architecture and how they are using an in-house Event Broker to add FIFO support (which EventBridge doesn't support) for some subscribers. It's similar to what Luc van Donkersgoed talked about in episode 68. We talked about their EventBridge topology and how they manage over 200 AWS accounts, and finally, what are the biggest shortcomings with EventBridge right now.Links from the episode:Job openings at OhpenEpisode 68 with PostNLEpisode 73 with NNLuc van Donkersgoed's Twitter and LinkedInThe decoupled invocation patternFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow me on Twitter as @theburningmonk and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 Luca Mezzalira, who is the author of "Building Micro-Frontends" by O'Reilly, and a Principal Specialist Solutions Architect at AWS focusing on serverless.We talked about micro-frontends and dived deep into his experience with them at both DAZN and AWS. We got a high-level overview of micro-frontends: what it is, how they work, and who should adopt micro-frontends. And why it worked out so well at DAZN, which had the challenge of supporting more than a dozen of devices including set-top boxes with custom versions of HTML!We were also able to dive deep into some technical topics, such as how to manage the shared user state (e.g. credentials and session); how to build micro-frontends from a CI/CD pipeline POV; and how to maintain a consistent styling and layout across all your micro-frontend pages.Links from the episode:The frontend-discovery-service open-source project in AWS LabsLuca's Microfrontends bookFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow me on Twitter as @theburningmonk and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 Eric Peterson who is the founder and CTO of CloudZero, a leading vendor that helps AWS customers reign in their AWS spending by revealing hidden savings and preventing costly mistakes.We discussed a range of topics, including common mistakes AWS users make and how CloudZero once saved a customer potentially a million-dollar on CDN bills by alerting them of spending abnormalities early.We also talked about the trade-off between having cloud cost controls and the cost overhead they add. We talked about FinOps and how CloudZero can understand the unit cost of their own systems and how much each customer costs them because of the pay-per-use pricing model of serverless technologies.And we discussed the wider economic trends in 2023 and how that might impact companies going forward and how it might change their views on serverless and the cloud more broadly.Links from the episode:Erik's Twitter, Linkedin and personal blogBuilding a fully serverless insurance company with Joe EmisonFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow me on Twitter as @theburningmonk and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 Dax Raad to talk about SST and the challenges of building an open-source community. Honestly, I think AWS can learn a thing or two from Dax's approach towards open-source, an approach that puts the needs of the customers first at the cost of the convenience of the maintainers.We talked about some shortcomings of CDK, the origin of SST and what problems it's supposed to solve; who are the intended users; and how SST differs from other simpler products on the market.We talked about Dax's journey into serverless, via Kubernetes. And the self-realization that deep down, behind all the arguments about "vendor lock-in", he was pushing back on serverless because he was trying to avoid learning another thing.And we reminisced about learning programming languages and our shared appreciation for Erlang and the actor model!Links from the episode:Check out SST hereThis episode is sponsored by Momento. Get all the benefits of database caching and none of the operational headache with Momento Serverless Cache. Start free at gomomento.co/realworld.For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow me on Twitter as @theburningmonk and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 Kirk Kirkconnell to talk about his experience with database technologies and serverless. Kirk had been involved with databases his whole career, including recently with the DynamoDB and Momento teams.We talked about single table design with DynamoDB - when to use it and some common drawbacks to consider. We discussed the strength and weaknesses of DynamoDB DAX and when to use it vs a general-purpose caching solution like Momento.But the big discussion was about the rise of faux serverless services and the important, yet often underrated role of scale to zero. And why there needs to be a litmus test for serverless storage services so people have a better idea of what they're getting themselves into!Links from the episode:Litmus for serverless (blog post)Jobs at MomentoGetting started with MomentoThis episode is sponsored by Momento. Get all the benefits of database caching and none of the operational headache with Momento Serverless Cache. Start free at gomomento.co/realworld.For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow me on Twitter as @theburningmonk and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 Vijai Ramcharan to talk about his experience with introducing serverless at NN, a 175 years-old financial services company based in the Netherlands.We touched on many topics, from changing existing mindsets and training engineers about AWS and serverless, to vendor lock-in and challenges with adopting serverless at the enterprise scale.Links from the episode:Vacancies at NNVijai's article on kickstarting serverless adoption at NNWerner Vogel's keynote at re:invent 2022Gregor Hophe's talk on Modern cloud applications: Do they lock you in?This episode is sponsored by Momento. Get all the benefits of database caching and none of the operational headache with Momento Serverless Cache. Start free at gomomento.co/realworld.For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow us on Twitter as @RealWorldSls and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 caught up with Rowan Udell to talk about his book The Practical AWS IAM Guide and get his takes on IAM best practices.Links from the episode:AWS IAM AnalyzerCloudsplainingIAM livePermissions.CloudTrackIAMAWS services that work with IAMThis episode is sponsored by Momento. Get all the benefits of database caching and none of the operational headache with Momento Serverless Cache. Start free at gomomento.co/realworld. For more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow us on Twitter as @RealWorldSls and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 caught up with Ben Bridts, who is an AWS Community Hero and consultant at Cloudar in Belgium.We talked about many topics, including common mistakes companies make in AWS; the problems with AWS Organizations; pitfalls with platform teams; and some success stories from his work as a consultant.Links from the episode:Alex DeBrie's post on GraphQL and Single-table designFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow us on Twitter as @RealWorldSls and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 caught up with Sarah Hamilton, who is an AWS Community Builder and a software engineer at LEGO.We talked about her journey into serverless and LEGO's serverless adoption has changed since I spoke with Sheen and Nicole on this podcast. In the two years since they have grown from 6 features teams to over 25, all focused on serverless technologies. We also talked about some of Sarah's previous work, especially a project where she used Step Functions, and her approach towards testing Step Functions.Links from the episode:Sarah's talk on advanced event-driven architectures at LEGO groupEpisode 12: Serverless at LEGO with Nicole Yip and Sheen BrisalsFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow us on Twitter as @RealWorldSls and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 Sam Williams, who runs the Complete Coding YouTube channel where he teaches about AWS and Serverless. He recently published a new video course called "Master AWS Serverless with 7 Real World Projects" and shared some helpful tips on picking the right course and how you can get the most from these courses.Sam is also a serverless consultant and has helped many startups adopt serverless technologies successfully. We also discussed why it's a no-brainer for startups to choose serverless over containers nowadays!Links from the episode:Sam's new video course, "Master AWS Serverless with 7 Real World Projects", get 20% OFF with the code YANSam's YouTube channelSam's video using his homemade lightboardMy "AppSync Masterclass" video courseFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow us on Twitter as @RealWorldSls and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 AWS Serverless Hero Luc van Donkersgoed about how PostNL is using serverless technologies and discussed the challenges of building event-driven architectures and how PostNL tackles problems such as schema validation and testing.Links from the episode:Build cloud-native apps with Serverless interaction testingIT vacancies at PostNLAWS Distro for OpenTelemtryAWS X-Ray vs LumigoMy upcoming Testing Serverless Architectures video courseFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow us on Twitter as @RealWorldSls and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 caught up with Eoin Shanaghy to talk about his work at FourTheorem, a boutique consultancy based out of Ireland. We touched on many topics, including the challenges for serverless adoption at enterprises and a super interesting client project he worked on, which involved using serverless at scale in a high-performance computing environment.Links from the episode:FourRheorem websiteAWS Bites#39: Fighting COVID with serverless with Denis BauerFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow us on Twitter as @RealWorldSls and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 Nick Tune and Kacper Gunia to talk about Team Topologies, i.e. how to structure businesses and teams so that you can get stuff done faster. Companies often struggle to adopt modern software development practices and technologies because their team structures are misaligned with the practices they're trying to adopt. In this conversation, we will discuss what is team topologies, having the right incentives and funding models for teams, common anti-patterns, the problems with scrum and so much more! Links from the episode:London DDD meetup groupIndependent Value Streams with Domain-Driven Design (3h video course)teamtopologies.comFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow us on Twitter as @RealWorldSls and subscribe to this podcast.Want to step up your AWS game and learn how to build production-ready serverless applications? Check out my upcoming workshops and I will teach you everything I know.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 caught up with Adam Elmore (@aeduhm), AWS DevTools Hero and an active member of the AWS community. We talked about how he passed all 12 AWS certifications in 2 weeks and how they have helped him find success on the AWS IQ platform. We also touched on his new project, public.dev, the general lack of performance-focused site builders, live streaming on Twitch and his plans for a new video course.Links from the episode:Adam's Twitch channelAWS IQpublic.devAppSync MasterclassFor more stories about real-world use of serverless technologies, please follow us on Twitter as @RealWorldSls and subscribe to this podcast.To learn how to build production-ready serverless applications, check out my upcoming workshops.Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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