Serverless Superhero

Our serverless superhero this week is Zied Ben Tahar, principal architect at AVIV Group and AWS Community Builder. Zied is a wonderful blogger, frequently writing about serverless and AI. He’s also a very active member of the serverless community, offering help to those who need it on social media and in community-driven forums. Thank you for everything, Zied!

Tutorials

In the last issue, I was intrigued by a build that used CloudFront KeyValueStore to build a serverless redirection service. Last week, Jimmy Dahlqvist took that idea and ran with it. He shared his take on a serverless redirect service that promises the same ideas with a slightly different implementation. I love this about the community - someone posts a great idea and somebody else takes it and makes it better. Very cool build!

In case you missed it, AWS AppSync recently got a direct integration with Amazon EventBridge. Michael Liendo walks us through exactly how to use it to invoke an AppSync API with an EventBridge rule in his blog post from last week. This post comes with everything - a full code repository, a video walkthrough, and a detailed explanation of the build.

Interesting Reads

When articles get into the weeds of performance optimizations, bundling, and saving 30ms of cold start time, my eyes usually gloss over and I move on. But for some reason, David Behroozi’s post last week caught my attention. He wrote about some recent changes in the AWS JavaScript SDK that optimizes cold starts with lazy loading that are simply fascinating. He tells the story of how he put in some serious work to get action out of AWS engineers and wonderfully explains the change and how it benefits your runtime environment.

I’m starting to see more and more people try out AWS App Composer and I’m excited to see the flurry of positivity. Last week, Ran Isenberg shared his impressions of the service, speculating if it’s a better and simpler way to build serverless services on AWS. Ran does a great job staying objective and shares what’s great and… not so great about the service. This is a must-read if you haven’t tried it out yet - especially if you’re a CDK user.

I don’t hide that Step Functions is my favorite AWS service. But unfortunately, I’m a little behind on testing out the new features from re:Invent. What new features, you ask? Chloe McAteer reminded us what they were and walked us through how they work in her post from last week. I love this recap because it shows you exactly what to expect when you try it yourself.

Podcasts

The Ready, Set, Cloud podcast is back for season 2! Last week, I talked to Jeremy Daly about moving into a post-serverless era and what it would take to get there. We cover a lot of ground, including what the landscape looks like in the future, what it will take to get there, and the current state of serverless.

Spotlight

I love analogies. I think they’re one of the most effective ways to get people to understand foreign concepts. Julia Furst Morgado shared a post last week comparing different types of software development to owning a car. She describes the difference between building on-prem, using serverless, and everything in between all while nailing a car analogy. This is a great reference point if you want to explain the differences in the types of modern app development to your friends and family.

Tip of the Week

Don’t forget about ServerlessLand! It’s a fantastic resource for serverless development that keeps getting better and better. As of last week, it has 28 workshops to help you learn serverless!

ServerlessLand now has 28 workshops to help you learn Serverless ❤️

Here are a few hosted so far👇

⭐️ The Amazon API Gateway Workshop
In this workshop, you will learn how to use the primary features of Amazon API Gateway through a series of interactive modules. The workshop… pic.twitter.com/vtWKfD3M9X

— David Boyne 🚀 (@boyney123) January 31, 2024

New Releases

AWS Glue received an Amazon Q integration, allowing you to build data integration jobs with natural language. This is pretty much the epitome of software development with respect to building integrations - if it works like it’s supposed to.

Amazon EventBridge event matching now runs on Open Source Event Ruler v1.50 which opens up a lot more use cases for advanced filtering.

Amazon Cognito adds signing, encryption, and IDP-initiated SSO for SAM federation. This is all a bit over my head, but it sounds important 😅

Last Words

Do you want to be on the Ready, Set, Cloud podcast? Send me a message and we’ll get something set up! Also, if you haven’t joined it yet, the Believe in Serverless community is growing! We’re holding weekly live streams with community members talking about all things serverless and engaging in some amazing conversations. I highly recommend checking it out!

If you’d like to make a recommendation for the serverless superhero or for an article you found especially useful, send me a message on Twitter, LinkedIn, or email.

Happy Coding!

Allen