In my last conversation with Ben Kehoe on the real-world serverless podcast, he said something profound and it’s been bugging me ever since. And now I’m ready to infect you with this brain bug! You’re welcome ;-) On the infrastructure-from-code trend, Ben said: “I think infrastructure-from-code is wrong on all counts. I don’t think we should …
Are we getting infrastructure all wrong in the Serverless era? Read More »
When I previously wrote about testing Step Functions, I gave you a general strategy that consists of: Component tests that target the Lambda functions (specifically, the custom code you wrote in those functions). End-to-end tests that execute the state machine in the cloud. Local tests using Step Functions Local where you can use mocks to …
Testing Step Functions: how to skip time when testing Timeout and Wait states Read More »
Several people have asked me about unit testing CDK applications recently. The questions often go something like this: “Because it can be in Python or TS, people bring up unit testing for CDK, whereas it’s not even thought about with Serverless Framework, SAM or Terraform. What are your thoughts on this?” “I have so many …
No, you don’t need to test every line of your CDK application Read More »
Last week, PrimeVideo posted a headline-grabbing article that broke tech Twitter. The article is a case study of how a PrimeVideo team cut the running cost of its service by 90% by moving away from a microservice architecture running on Lambda and Step Functions. The team didn’t expect the service to run at a high …
Is serverless overpriced? What can we learn from the PrimeVideo team? Read More »
Ask most developers why they like the CDK and they will say “It lets me write infrastructure in my favourite programming language”. That’s nice, but why should that be a consideration for an Infra-as-Code (IaC) tool? That’s like saying “I like Strepsils because it tastes like candy”. ps. if you mention candy, pharmacy staff would …
Are You Ready for This? Top 5 Earth-Shattering Pros and Cons of AWS CDK Read More »
Managing and securing application secrets is a crucial part of any cloud-native application. AWS offers two primary services: the Systems Manager (SSM) Parameter Store and the more recent Secrets Manager. You might think Secrets Manager is the better choice for managing secrets because it’s a newer service and offers more advanced features such as cross-region …
The Old Faithful: Why SSM Parameter Store still reigns over Secrets Manager Read More »
Last week, we looked at implementing passwordless authentication using one-time passwords (OTPs) using Cognito [1]. Another popular passwordless authentication method is magic links where: The user initiates the sign-in process by entering their email in your application. They receive an email with a time-limited URL. The user clicks on the URL and is authenticated into …
Implementing Magic Links with Amazon Cognito: A Step-by-Step Guide Read More »
Password-based authentication has long been the norm for securing user accounts. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that password-based authentication has several drawbacks. Such as the risk of password theft, the need for users to remember complex passwords, and the time and effort required to reset forgotten passwords. Fortunately, more and more websites have started …
Passwordless Authentication made easy with Cognito: a step-by-step guide Read More »
UPDATE 02/08/2023: EventBridge Schedule now supports automated deletion upon completion. So the problem and solution discussed in this post is no longer relevant. Please see the announcement here. The launch of EventBridge Scheduler was one of the highlights for me for re:Invent 2022. Finally, we have a scalable service that lets us schedule ad-hoc, …
The biggest problem with EventBridge Scheduler and how to fix it Read More »
Many software engineering concepts show up in different contexts. Modularity, the single-responsibility principle and separation of concerns are just a few examples that come to mind. They are equally applicable to how we write code, architect our systems and organize our teams. Similarly, there are many parallels between multithreaded programming and event-driven architectures. For example, …
3 ways to manage concurrency in serverless applications Read More »
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