Off-by-none: Issue #179

March 8, 2022

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What’s the next evolution of modern apps? 🔮

Welcome to Issue #179 of Off-by-none. This issue is sponsored by our friends at Catalyst by Zoho.

Last week, TypeScript got some love from the serverless community, we learned how to prototype faster, and we asked if serverless was just a stopover for EDA. This week, the CNCF says “yes” to Knative, Cloudflare actually takes a sensible Ukraine strategy, and we learn about Functional and Lean Web Apps. Plus, there’s plenty of great content from the serverless community.

Serverless News & Announcements 📣

This past week, Knative officially became a CNCF project, and Scott Carey explains why Google (finally) donated it to the CNCF. And without wasting any time, TriggerMesh announced broad support for Knative.

In some security news, a major Microsoft Azure cross-tenant vulnerability was caught by Orca Security, so that’s not particularly great news. But on the other hand, VMware added the capability to secure container runtimes.

Fastly launched their new Compute@Edge Partner Ecosystem, Zoho unveiled the latest version of their low-code offering, and DataStax says it had 400% YoY growth of its Astra DB Cloud Database.

Cloudflare outlined the steps they’ve taken with their services in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. I have to say, I’m quite impressed by their action on this and how they are navigating compliance with international sanctions, while also making sure that “Russian citizens see world news beyond that provided within Russia.”

And last, but certainly not least, Serverless Cloud introduced Atomic Counters and Batch Sets for Serverless Data.

Serverless Concepts 🏗

Does GraphQL replace REST API? Probably not, but there are certainly some good arguments (and examples) in this post.

Allen Helton shared some lessons learned from switching to AWS SDK v3, and why you probably should too (especially if you’re writing Lambda Functions).

Pablo Iorio explains the difference between service-full serverless and no-code solutions. I think there’s a bit of nuance being missed between “service-full” and “low-code”, but the main points are valid.

Joel Hamilton shows you how to do integration testing of Step Functions using sls-test-tools. There’s a good introduction in here to both Step Functions and testing.

And speaking of Step Functions, Matthew Venne tells you why it’s the best AWS service you’re not using and how his team used it to meet FedRAMP Moderate Compliance Requirements.

Marco Troisi has a post that suggests you change your testing priorities with serverless applications. I agree that integration tests are important (as I always say, you don’t need to unit test the cloud), but design your apps in a way that lets you easily unit test your business logic. Then integration tests can make sure you’ve wired it together correctly.

#CatalystServerless Blogathon 2022. $1000 up for grabs!
Calling all our serverless enthusiasts! Here’s a chance to win exciting prizes and get featured on the Catalyst blog section. Flex your serverless expertise by participating in the #CatalystServerless Blogathon 2022. Simply pick one of the four given topics and submit your write-up before March 31, 2022. Inspire fellow developers by writing something share-worthy and valuable, and help the serverless community. Participate here Sponsored

Serverless Tutorials 👷‍♀️

Paul Swail shows you how to continually integrate WIP features into your serverless apps.

Ben Miner teaches you how to make a Discord playlist bot with Serverless Cloud and Spotify. Ben does a great job showing just how to setup a Discord app, which probably deserves its own blog post.

Priyabrata Jena shares how to deploy Lambda container images.

Jones Zachariah Noel explains an interesting use case of IAM credential rotation automation using Step Functions.

And Aravind V presents an AWS CDK 101 post to give you the basics and get you started with the AWS CDK.

Serverless Reads 🤓

Brian Leroux shared an interesting post introducing “Functional Web Apps”, which is more of a reframing of an existing architectural pattern than something new. But I do like what he did here, at least in terms of calling out the fact that the term “serverless” has essentially becoming meaningless. I think FWAs (as Brian calls them) will be “a” pattern, but I don’t think they will be “the” pattern. As much as we’ve come to know and love IaC and Lambda Functions, the trend seems to be moving away from these to more code-less solutions like AppSync, Step Functions, and direct integrations to cloud services (even directly from the frontend). The future will not be writing AWS specific control plane instructions to provision infrastructure. If it is, count me out.

And while we’re talking about the future, I guess we need to at least mention “web3” and blockchains. Tim Wagner asks (and answers): are blockchains databases? He also links to his post on The Lean App Movement, which is another interesting architectural pattern for “modern applications”. Issam Ouchen explains a modern approach to data sharing, in which he claims that “serverless technology is the missing piece in the Blockchain puzzle.” He goes on to explain how Vendia’s blockchain plays an important role.

And Tom Shnaider tells us about Arweave, web3’s take on file storage. I’m not as bullish on web3 as others seem to be, but if you thought everything you ever posted online would never be deleted, wait until you read about “Economically Sustainable Information Permanence.” 😳

And if we wanted another alternative to Infrastructure-as-Code, Corey Quinn offers a strategy for “ClickOps”, which isn’t a joke.

I’m not sure who actually wrote these six trends that will shape the future of software development, but at least “user experience first”, the “rise of progressive web apps”, “speeding up development with serverless computing”, and the “growth of low code and no code” are dead on.

And finally, Marc Brooker wrote a post about fixing retries with token buckets and circuit breakers. It’s a super interesting article, but the fact that Marc Brooker wrote it should be all you need to know to give it a click.

Podcasts, Videos, and more 🎧

On Serverless Chats Episode #127: Supporting Women in Tech, Rebecca and I chat with Kristi Perreault about how to support women in tech, the benefits of “squeaky clean code”, how her team helps enable serverless developers at Liberty Mutual, and a whole lot more!

The Serverless Craic team gives us an introduction to the “Modern Cloud”, Marcia Villalba teaches you the “best method” for how to design event-driven applications, and Charles Humble chats with Jessica Kerr about how Honeycomb uses AWS Lambda for its custom database Retriever.

New from AWS 🆕

• Amazon Fault Injection Simulator now supports logging to Amazon CloudWatch Logs and Amazon S3
• Announcing Amplify iOS Library (Developer Preview), rewritten to entirely use Swift
• Introducing a new Amazon RDS Multi-AZ option with up to 2x faster transaction commit latency, automated failovers typically under 35 seconds, and readable standby instances
• Amazon DevOps Guru extends support for Lambda with CodeGuru Profiler Integration
• Amazon Fault Injection Simulator now supports Task-Level Faults for Amazon Elastic Container Service

Serverless Tools 🛠

dynamodump v2.0
Node cli for exporting and importing schema and data from DynamoDB.

serverless-finch v3.0
A Serverless Framework plugin for deployment of static website assets of your Serverless project to AWS S3.

Thoughts from Twitter 🐦

Understanding the value of AWS and Amazon Retail integration – a perspective from a long-time $AMZN shareholder. In the thread, I discuss the value of integration, both the upside and downside of the spin-off, and why the company is correct to never really consider it. ~ Nayut Sitachitt
This thread literally changed my entire perspective on the matter. 🤯

Upcoming Serverless Events 🗓

If you have an event, webinar, etc. that you’d like me to mention, please email me.

April 4–6, 2022 – Serverless Architecture Conference

Serverless Star of the Week ⭐️

There is a very long list of people who are doing #ServerlessGood and contributing to the Serverless community. These people deserve recognition for their efforts. So each week, I will mention someone whose recent contribution really stood out to me. I love meeting new people, so if you know someone who deserves recognition, please nominate them.

This week’s star is Daniel Adeyanju (@NYCDan_). Daniel is a Founding Member and Programs Director at Kura Labs, a free training and job placement academy for Infrastructure Computing, DevOps, and SRE for students from underserved communities. He has recruited Kura’s talented instructors and manages curriculum enhancement, student learning development and job placement, and alumni career enhancement. Daniel enjoys building impactful products for people and looks for opportunities at the intersection of innovation and inclusion. Thank you, Daniel, for your generosity and commitment to expanding opportunities for all!

Final Thoughts 🤔

That’s a wrap for this week! Phew, even I thought this one was never going to end. 😀

Make sure you check out the on-demand replay of a Decade of Innovation with Amazon DynamoDB. It was an incredibly fun event with lots of really great talks and information about DynamoDB. And (I’m going to keep asking 😉) if you’re interested in learning how to model data with DynamoDB, make sure you sign up for my upcoming DynamoDB modeling course.

See you next week,
Jeremy

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter. We’re always looking for ideas and feedback to make it better and more inclusive, so please feel free to reach out to me via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or email.