#31 Vibe Coding 😈

This week, our expert is AWS Serverless Hero Jeevan Dongre, our spotlight falls on AWS Community Builder Jannik Wempe, we look at the latest AWS service releases, news, blog posts, & more!

Apr 04, 2025

Welcome

In last week’s issue, our serverless expert was AWS Serverless Hero Hazel Saenz, and our spotlight fell on AWS Data Hero Alex Debrie!
This week, our serverless expert is AWS Serverless Hero Jeevan Dongre, our spotlight falls on AWS Community Builder Jannik Wempe, we look at the latest AWS service releases, blog posts, hints and tips, news and more!
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by Leighton.

📰 Articles that caught the eye

Here are some of the stand-out articles I read during the week in the World of Serverless!

⭐ My favourite this week was by Allen Helton on CORS and MCP! (He clearly has hacker vibes going on in the photo..)

🎓 Ask the Expert

Each week, I ask a different serverless expert the same three questions to get their personal insights - this week, we have AWS Serverless Hero Jeevan Dongre:

Opinions are the author’s and do not express the views of their employer.

1. What is one common mistake you see teams making when implementing serverless solutions, and how can they avoid it?

One common mistake I see teams making when implementing serverless solutions is that developers find it difficult to find the right balance between simplification and complicating their solutions. One way they can avoid it is by carefully analysing all the access patterns their product can possibly have before jumping into development.

2. Which serverless tool or service are you most excited about right now, and why?

Supabase edge functions are something that excites me as the runtime (Deno) is super lightweight and also robust. They also have numerous templates that can get you coding your applications really quickly.

3. What is your favourite trick or tip when working with serverless that the readers may find interesting?

My favourite tip to ease serverless development is to have a neat self made CLI to have the function files be generated when I want to create a new lambda. It really saves so much time when you want to build and ship fast. I like to make this CLI also include some basic test cases. Another tip I personally enjoy using is vibe coding. AI can boost your initial development a lot and it's something that's getting more traction now as more people are exploring tools like Cursor and other code generation AI models.

✅ Bonus tip: join the hashtag#believeinsls discord! There is a community there to answer any questions you may have without getting overzealous on serverless or without judgment! Check it out!

🚀 New Releases

Here are the latest releases this week in the AWS World:

⭐ The most interesting for me this week was the Amazon EventBridge Scheduler L2 construct release in the AWS CDK since I am a big fan.

🔥 Tip: Check out https://aws-news.com/ for the very latest up-to-date serverless releases as they happen, created by the talented AWS Serverless Hero Luc van Donkersgoed.

👷🏻 Tools & Frameworks

Check out the latest open-source frameworks, news, and tool updates from the past week.

EventCatalog SDK 2.1.2 is now out - Programmatically create, get, and delete custom documentation pages in EventCatalog!
mikroauth - Dead-simple magic link authentication that is useful, lightweight, and uncluttered.

✖️ Social of the Week

This week’s social is on LinkedIn by Daniel Moka:

It’s hard to get away from the AI posts filling our newsfeeds at the moment, but this post really resonated with me. I have said it a few times in this newsletter in recent months, but I agree, that the people who benefit from AI the most are the people who understand the fundamentals of software design and engineering; and I think this will become more prevalent in the next few years.

What are your thoughts on how generative AI helps in different ways at different experience levels? Do you agree with the post?

🎙️ YouTube & Podcasts

Here are some of my favourite videos and podcasts this week.

⭐ My favourite video this week is by Darko Mesaros and Laura Salinas covering building video games with Amazon Q Developer!

💡 Hints & Tips

Each week, I share any quick hints or tips based on things I notice in day-to-day engineering life.

⭐ [Tip 1] Axios Retry - If you are currently using Axios in your AWS serverless solutions, 100% go checkout axios-retry for retrying failed requests with exponential backoff and configurable retries automatically. A quick example of how easy it is to use in your existing solutions is below:

⭐ [Tip 2] DynamoDB Sparse Indexes - if you are using DynamoDB in your Serverless solutions, you may not have come across “sparse indexes” which are super useful in certain scenarios!

“For any item in a table, DynamoDB writes a corresponding index entry only if the index sort key value is present in the item. If the sort key doesn't appear in every table item, or if the index partition key is not present in the item, the index is said to be sparse.“ - AWS

Global secondary indexes are sparse by default. When you create a global secondary index, you specify a partition key and optionally a sort key. Only items in the base table that contain those attributes appear in the index.

Here, Rick has played three games and achieved Champ status in one of them. Padma has played four games and achieved Champ status in two of them. Notice that the Award attribute is present only in items where the user achieved an award. The associated global secondary index looks like the following:

The global secondary index contains only the high scores that are frequently queried, which are a small subset of the items in the base table. This is a great tip for increased performance in certain scenarios with DynamoDB.

Weekly Case Study 🔍

This week’s case study comes from Cadent.

Cadent, the UK’s National Gas Emergency Service operator, partnered with AWS and Slalom to improve how gas leaks in outdoor areas without postal addresses are reported. Previously, callers had to verbally describe locations, leading to delays and safety risks. AWS quickly provided a proof of concept, and within months, Slalom developed the LocateMe app using Amazon Location Service and AWS App Runner.

Figure 1. Architecture Diagram for the LocateMe App — Cadent solution overview diagram from the AWS Case Studies

Now, operators send an SMS link to callers, who use GPS to pinpoint the leak, reducing call times from 12 minutes to 5–6 minutes. The system enables faster response times and enhances public safety. Cadent plans to expand the app to further automate the reporting process.

🗣️ Inspirational Quotes and Thoughts

This week’s inspirational quote comes from Jon Postel:

“Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send.”
- Jon Postel (Postel’s Law)

This law (also sometimes called the robustness principle), is one that I believe should affect the way we build event-driven architectures, where in my opinion, we should be conservative in the information we share in our events, as the more we share, the more coupling we end up having at a semantic level with consumers and contracts. Don’t put everything and the kitchen sink into your events!

🗳️ Poll of the Week

In last week’s poll, we asked the question “Do you do "vibe coding" on personal projects with generative AI?“, with 68% saying yes they do, 17% saying no, and another 17% asking what vibe coding actually is. Personally, I have done it on some personal private projects and the results have been quite good!

This week, we ask the question, “Do you use feature flags in your serverless solutions?“.

Do you use them and find them really effective? Have you tried them in the past but found they added additional complexity? Feel free to leave a comment below on why you chose your answer and your experiences!

📅 Serverless Events

The following serverless events are upcoming, so mark your calendars.

🎟️ To note, CFP is currently open for the AWS North conference which I am helping organise, and we also have opportunities for lightening talks throughout the day. Go check it out!

Other fantastic events happening soon:

AWS Community Day Romania - 10th April 2025
AWS Community Day Turkey - 19th April 2025
AWS Community Day CZ - 29th April 2025
ServerlessDays Belfast 2025 - 15th May 2025
ACD Bengaluru - 23rd May 2025
ACD Adria - 5th Sept 2025
AWS Community Day Baltic - 10th Sept 2025
ACD DACH - 7th Oct 2025
AWS North Community Conference - 16th Oct 2025

Do you have any upcoming events that you want to highlight? Message me below!

⭐ Spotlight

This week’s spotlight falls on AWS Community Builder Jannik Wempe!

Jannik is a fantastic part of our serverless community as an independent freelance consultant, active AWS Community Builder in the serverless cohort, blogger, and building micro-sass and tooling such as FraudFalcon and many others. When deep diving into subjects like AWS CDK Aspects and Domain-Driven Design in Serverless, I got great insights and other perspectives from his blog posts. Thank you for all you do for our wonderful community Jannik!

Thank you for reading the latest Serverless Advocate Newsletter!

If you want to find out a little more about me, please have a look at:

https://www.serverlessadvocate.com/

See you next time,

Lee