Off-by-none: Issue #310

January 7, 2025

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Welcome to 2025! 🥂

In our previous issue, AWS added Live CloudWatch Logs to VScode, Guardrails got a lot cheaper, and Jeff Barr stepped away from the AWS News Blog after 20 years. This week, the AWS CDK is looking for your input, Node.js now (kinda) supports TypeScript, and we catch up on three weeks of serverless. Plus, we have lots of great content from the cloud and serverless community!

Serverless News & Announcements 📣

Even though it's been a few weeks since the last newsletter, there haven't been any major AWS announcements. Amazon EventBridge announced API destinations proactive OAuth token refresh, SES Mail Manager now supports full lifecycle logging, and AWS has added notification actions in the AWS Console Mobile App for iOS.

AWS AppSync GraphQL enhanced Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL and MySQL support with new resolver utilities, plus Stable Diffusion 3.5 Large and Meta’s Llama 3.3 70B model are now available in Amazon Bedrock. Other than that, there's not much to report.

Matthew Bonig posted that the AWS CDK Team has announced a new Contributor Council, meaning you can now steer the direction of the AWS CDK. If anything needs direction, it's definitely the CDK. 😉

If you're interested in EventCatalog, take a look at the EventCatalog December 2024 update. Lots of really interesting stuff happening with David Boyne's project.

Also, Node.js now supports TypeScript by default! Well, it'll strip out the types and run the code, but still better than nothing.

Finally, we all got some extremely sad news this week when Allen Helton posted that his 4-year-old daughter, Olivia, lost her battle with cancer. Allen is an amazing person and a staple in the serverless community. My heart goes out to him and his family. ❤️

Serverless Tutorials 👷‍♀️

There were three weeks worth of tutorials to dig through, but here are some of my favorites:

• Rendering Diagrams with AWS Lambda by Matt Martz
• Building a Cloud Native Serverless Chat On AWS by Marko Djakovic
• Highly scalable image storage solution with AWS Serverless at ip.labs - Part 3 Building File API for Uploads and Downloads by Vadym Kazulkin
• Amazon Aurora DSQL: The New Era of Distributed SQL by Kevin Kiruri
• AWS Serverless: Invoke Lambda function asynchronously and use destination for failed events by Girish Bhatia
• Spring Boot 3 application on AWS Lambda - Part 14 Measuring cold and warm starts with GraalVM Native Image and memory settings by Vadym Kazulkin
• How to Define AI Agents with Cloudformation and SAM: A Builder's Guide by Andrii Melashchenko
• Combine AWS WAF with reactive infrastructure to block attackers (and don't go broke in the process) by Paul Santus
• Cohesion vs. Coupling by Yan Cui
• Implementing Canary Deployment for Lambda Functions by Helio Tarnowski
• Serverless self-service IoT certificate management - Part 2 by Jimmy Dahlqvist
• Unit Testing Amazon Bedrock in Python by Pete Davis
• Ingest data from Google Analytics 4 and Google Sheets to Amazon Redshift using Amazon AppFlow by Ritesh Sinha, Amit Ghodke, Tahir Aziz, and Raza Hafeez
• Building a Serverless Podcast Workflow: Adventures with AI by Jon Goodall
• Data API for Amazon Aurora Serverless v2 with AWS SDK for Java - Part 11 Logging and monitoring by Vadym Kazulkin
• Replicate data from DynamoDB to Apache Iceberg tables using Glue Zero-ETL integration by Zied Ben Tahar

Serverless Reads 🤓

Being Functionless: How to Develop a Serverless Mindset to Write Less Code!
I definitely agree that functions are another code liability, but I also worry that "configuration over code" that buries business logic into service configs isn't always the answer either. But Sheen Brisals is brilliant, and so is this piece.

A Novel Pattern for Documenting DynamoDB Access Patterns
Tycko Franklin shares an interesting approach here. I haven't quite fully digested it yet, but it seems logical for complex single table designs. I'm still waiting to see if Amazon Aurora DSQL disrupts the need for DynamoDB in most serverless applications.

Test Your AI Agent Before It Tests Your Users' Patience
Rafal Wilinski shared some tips for something I've been thinking a lot about lately. Evals are critical to the success of GenAI workflows, and non-determinism is not your friend.

12 things I learned about hosting serverless sites on Cloudflare
Tyler Smith shares his experience with Cloudflare's serverless offerings. There are, of course, always tradeoffs, but for the right project, I think Cloudflare is a logical choice.

2025 Trending Cloud Services: Industry-Specific and Serverless
Is 2025 finally the year serverless goes mainstream? I mean, it probably already has and most people just don't realize they are using serverless services up and down their stack, but it sure is fun to talk about. 🙂

Architecture is a game of constraint satisfaction
I'm a big fan of the way Gregor Hohpe thinks. I don't always agree with everything, but his latest piece on constraints certainly aligns with my experience.

You don't need Next.js
"It's like using a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame," says Benny Kok. I know a lot of people are fans, and it certainly has its uses, but I'm also in the overkill camp. 🤷‍♂️

Podcasts, Videos, and more 🎧

"The Truth About Serverless"
I'm not a regular consumer of Theo's content, but I was pleasantly surprised by the thoughtfulness of this video. His math may have been off in a few places (probably to serverless' benefit), but his take on "scale to zero" not being about production but for development and staging instead, is the same drum I've been beating for the last 5 years!

Managing Complexity in Modern Software Systems
James Eastham guides you through a modern approach to software architecture and systems design, emphasizing simplicity, evolvability, and portability.

Should You Build A Monolith Or Microservices?
James Eastham shares his thoughts on how to ensure evolvability within a monolithic system and the steps needed to transition to microservices. And, more importantly, why you'd choose one over the other.

New from AWS 🆕

• Amazon Bedrock Agents, Flows, and Knowledge Bases now supports Latency Optimized Models
• AWS Elastic Beanstalk now updates environment status when invalid
• AWS Glue expands connectivity to 16 native connectors for applications
• Amazon Aurora now supports PostgreSQL 16.6, 15.10, 14.15, 13.18, and 12.22
• Amazon RDS Proxy announces caching_sha2_password authentication support for MySQL on Aurora and RDS
• Amazon MSK Connect adds support for Apache Kafka Connect version 3.7
• AWS WAF Console adds new Top Insights Visualizations
• AWS Billing and Cost Management now supports custom billing views for decentralized cloud cost management

Upcoming Events 🗓

February 20, 2025 - ServerlessDays Manchester 2025

June 12, 2025 - ServerlessDays Milano 2025

Please send me your serverless events!

Take the latest Off-by-none Cloud Quiz 🧑‍🏫

According to a new report in Bloomberg, what could be a potential consequence of the proliferation of AI data centers on the U.S. power grid?
Click an answer below to start the quiz.

• Increased risk of cyberattacks
• Overheating and equipment failure
• Higher carbon emissions
• Power distortions and potential outages
• Interference with telecommunication networks

Final Thoughts 🤔

I hope everyone was able to take some time to relax and recharge over the holiday break. I fully intended to relax, then ended up spending what felt like every waking moment installing radiant heat in my upstairs bathroom. I love to build things, but after removing the old tiles and thinset, priming the floor, laying the heating mats, mixing and pouring 300 pounds of self-leveler, cutting and installing 100 square feet of ceramic tile, grouting it all, and then cleaning up, I definitely prefer building cloud software.

Hopefully you were all similarly productive, just without the physical exhaustion. 😉

I'm looking forward to 2025. This is already shaping up to be a year filled with limitless possibilities. Plenty of serverless, of course, but also the maturing of GenAI and the emergence of AI-enhanced workloads that are adding real value to the customer experience. I will forever rail against AI slop, be it soulless content and "art", or artificial engagements that devalue the human experience. However, I'm a big believer that AI can accelerate human productivity when used ethically. This will be a big focus for me.

Happy New Year,
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 Bluesky, LinkedIn, X, or email.