#38 Life Beyond Python and TypeScript

This week, our expert is AWS Specialist Solution Architect Mark Sailes, our spotlight falls on AWS Community Builder Victoria Demina, we look at the latest service releases, news, articles, & more!

May 24, 2025

Welcome

In last week’s issue, our serverless expert was AWS Community Builder Matthew Wilson, and our spotlight fell on Senior Solutions Architect, Powertools for AWS, Andrea Amorosi!
This week, our serverless expert is AWS Senior Specialist Solution Architect Mark Sailes, our spotlight falls on AWS Community Builder Victoria Demina, 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 stand-out articles I read during the week in the World of Serverless!

⭐ My favourite this week was the article by Tom Nachum on CloudWatch Synthetics since I have a bit of a soft spot for them!

🎓 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 Senior pecialist Solution Architect Mark Sailes:

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?

Teams which haven’t used cloud, or managed cloud services are often more cautious than they need to be. You don’t need to overanalyse decisions because they are often very easy to change.

With your own infrastructure, even in the best case, you would most likely raise a ticket to ask for a new, highly available queue or database to be created. This could often take days, so it made sense for the team to make sure what they were asking for was exactly correct.

With serverless, you can have a Kinesis Data Stream, SQS queue, and DynamoDB table in seconds. If you make a mistake, you delete the resource and move on.

Not 100% sure if you need SQS or EventBridge as a trigger to a Lambda function? Try it out. You’ll save days of time and learn in the process.

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

The Lambda Profiler Extension for Java is still experimental, but I’ve used it a lot with customers to help them understand what their code is doing when deployed to Lambda.

It’s a really quick and easy way to get very detailed information about your application without having to alter your code.

If you’re not familiar with flame graphs or profiling, Maxime David and Eric Johnson recorded an excellent video, showing how to use it and analyse the data.

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

I used to waste a lot of time with IAM permission problems when building systems. When I started using CDK I realised this was no longer a problem for me.

CDK allows you to easily grant permissions without having to dive into very fine-grained detail. For example, if you had a Lambda function which wanted to download pictures from an S3 bucket you could write.

Bucket photoBucket = Bucket.Builder.create(...);

photoBucket.grantRead(lambdaFunction);

 ⁠This will give you a policy which is specific to those two resources. No more *s in IAM policies because ”I just wanted to get it working”.

Later on, if I want to be very specific, then you can evaluate which specific actions have been added, and remove any you don’t use.

✅ 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!

💡 Hints & Tips

Each week, I share quick hints or tips based on things I notice in day-to-day engineering life, with this week covering commit governance in serverless solutions!

⭐ [Tip 1] Conventional Commits - let’s start with using Conventional Commits as a specification in your developer workflows. The Conventional Commits specification is a lightweight convention on top of commit messages. It provides an easy set of rules for creating an explicit commit history, which makes it easier to write automated tools on top of (such as Commitizen). This convention dovetails with SemVer, by describing the features, fixes, and breaking changes made in commit messages.

⭐ [Tip 2] Commitizen - once you have adopted Conventional Commits as a standard, you can look at automated tooling, such as Commitizen. When you commit with Commitizen, you'll be prompted to fill out any required commit fields at commit time through a CLI (as shown below), which will enforce the commit standards described above.

⭐ [Tip 4] CommitLint - We can also combine this with CommitLint to ensure nothing falls through the cracks, which will validate the commit message post CLI.

⭐ [Tip 5] Left Hook - OK, so how do we enforce that our team of engineers use Commitizen and CommitLint? Well, this is where we can use Git Hooks through a tool such as Left Hook or Husky. Left Hook will hijack the git hook for pre-commit-msg and commit-msg, and automatically run Commitizen, meaning that the CLI will always be invoked, followed by CommitLint for validation. Your Left Hook config may look like this below, for example:

🚀 New Releases

Here are the latest and most interesting releases this week in the AWS World:

⭐ This week my favourite release is the introduction of Claude 4 on Amazon Bedrock.

🔥 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.

Envilder - A CLI that securely centralises your environment variables from AWS SSM as a single source of truth.
self.so - Turn your resume/LinkedIn into a professional website.
Unbody - Building AI features today is a complex and fragmented process. Unbody fixes that. We're continuing our journey out in the open. The project is in early development, so expect some rough edges.
secondme - The first open-source AI identity system that delivers 100% private, deeply personalised AI agents built specifically to represent your authentic self.
OWL - Optimised Workforce Learning for General Multi-Agent Assistance in Real-World Task Automation.
sqs-admin - A minimal and lightweight UI for managing SQS-Queues for local development e.g. with Localstack.

💡 DynamoDB Tip of the Week

Each week we have a quick DynamoDB tip from our resident DynamoDB expert, Uriel Bitton.

💡 “Use begins_with() for filtering queries and BETWEEN for range-based queries”

Use begins_with() when you need to match a sort key prefix, and BETWEEN to query over a numeric or date range. These are highly optimised and reduce the need for post-query filtering.

Further reading: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/Query.KeyConditionExpressions.html

✖️ Social of the Week

This week’s social is on X/Twitter by Luca Mezzalira:

Here is the full tweet:

”…Here’s my honest answer: I don’t waste opportunities to work—especially while I’m travelling. Some of my most productive moments have happened in airports, on trains, or waiting at the gate with a coffee in hand. Sure, the internet is slow, the seat isn’t as comfy as my office chair, and there’s a constant hum of announcements in the background.
But for some reason, being in public spaces instantly puts me in a state of focus. With good music in my headphones and a clear goal, I find myself able to tune out the world and tune in to my work.
There’s something about the energy of travel—the movement, the anticipation, the pause between destinations—that helps me create without even realising how much I’m getting done. If you’re struggling to find time for your side projects or creative work, try embracing those “in-between” moments or simply change environment. You might be surprised by how much you can achieve outside your comfort zone. Before you scroll down, let me ask you, what are your tips to enter in a deep focus state?”

I love this tweet as this is something I also do when travelling, and many of you would have seen me working in the AWS Community Builder lounge in Vegas, hotel lobbies when speaking at conferences, or even in the airport when waiting for my flights.

There is just something about the focus you get when having a clear goal + dedicated time + typically a countdown of some sort (the clock ticking down to a flight departure, for example), that works so so well!

🎙️ YouTube & Podcasts

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

⭐ My favourite video this week is by Matthew Wilson talking all things Serverless, Microsoft and .net!

Laura Salinas has a great video on “Creating an AI-Powered Japan Travel Guide feat. Amazon Bedrock MultiModal Knowledge Bases“.
Matthew Wilson did a great session at ServerlessDays Belfast titled “The joy of serverless .net?“.
The AWS Bites podcast covers “Lambda Billing Changes, Cold Start Costs, and Log Savings: What You Need to Know“.
Stuart Scott has a great video titled “Amazon Bedrock - Build GenAI Apps Without the Dev Pain“.
Trisha Gee from the Modern Software Engineering has a great video on “How Smart Devs Use AI Tools Every Day“.
Julian Wood covers “Serverless Compute at the Heart of Your EDA“ at GOTO Copenhagen 2024 which has just been uploaded.
James Eastham discusses “The Feature You Must Know About If You're Using Lambda SnapStart for .NET“.

Weekly Case Study 🔍

This week’s case study comes from The Natural History Museum.

The Natural History Museum has partnered with AWS to develop a comprehensive Data Ecosystem aimed at enhancing biodiversity research and conservation efforts. This platform integrates data from various sources, including environmental DNA (eDNA) samples, acoustic recordings, and visual observations, collected through a network of over 25 sensors installed in the museum's gardens.

Leveraging AWS technologies such as Amazon Fargate, AWS Cognito, and Glue, the system enables scalable, secure, and efficient data processing and storage. This centralised approach facilitates collaboration among researchers across the UK, allowing for real-time monitoring and analysis of urban biodiversity. By digitising and combining historical data with new observations, the initiative supports the creation of a 'digital twin' of the UK's biodiversity, providing valuable insights for science-led nature recovery and conservation strategies

🗣️ Inspirational Quotes and Thoughts

This week’s inspirational quote comes from Grady Booch:

“A fool with a tool is still a fool.”
- Grady Booch

Who knew this quote from Grady Booch (prominent software engineer and co-creator of UML) would be so relevant still when it comes to vibe coding and generative AI. I have seen so many LinkedIn posts from product owners, business analysts, or other non-technical people discussing how they have built a new product using only AI tools, and in some cases, making engineers redundant in the process.

I’m not saying they are ‘fools with tools’, but they certainly don’t have the knowledge or experience typically around areas such as security, scalability, governance, and unfortunately, many times neither does AI unless prompted by somebody experienced.

What are your thoughts and experiences with this quote? Feel free to leave a comment below.

🗳️ Poll of the Week

In last week’s poll, we asked the question “Do you version your microservices on AWS explicitly?”.

Interestingly, 67% said yes, and 33% said no. It’s an interesting one, as it goes without saying that we should version our APIs and event schemas, but having worked with a lot of companies, I would say I have seen 50/50 out in the wild.

This week, we ask the question, “Do you worry about your future role with the enhancements in AI?”. 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 Community Conference, which I am helping organise, and we also have opportunities for lightning talks throughout the day. Go check it out!

Other fantastic events happening soon:

ACD Bengaluru - 23rd May 2025
ACD Midwest - 5th June 2025
ACD Australia - 15th August 2025
ACD Adria - 5th Sept 2025
AWS Community Day Baltic - 10th Sept 2025
ACD Aotearoa - 18th Sept 2025
ACD Poland - 18th Sept 2025
ACD Portugal - 27th 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 Victoria Demina!

Victoria is a Software Engineer at the LEGO Group, blogger, AWS Community Builder, and a wonderful speaker (whether that be at local meet-ups or larger conferences like Serverless Days Manchester!) Check out her talk on Serverless Threat Modelling below: