Allen Helton on being an enabler, building communities, and is serverless dead? Links from the episode: Help Olivia's Fight Against Leukemia! Believe In Serverless community Ready, Set, Cloud! Momento, serverless cache Ep102: Peek behind the curtains of the AWS Heroes & Community Builders programmes, ft. Farrah Campbell Opening theme song: Cheery M…

Have you ever wished you could quit your job and go create content all day long while working for yourself? You can! In this episode, Yan Cui joins Allen Helton to talk about full-time content creation and consultancy within the serverless world. The two discuss Yan's journey to greatness, weigh in on the use of generative AI when it comes to conte…

I recently had a significant life event that has turned my world upside down. In this bonus episode, I share the story and let you know what you can do to help. Blog post: https://readysetcloud.io/blog/allen.helton/a-personal-update GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-olivias-fight-against-leukemia --- Send in a voice message: https://podcast…

Take a peek behind the AWS Heroes and Community Builders programmes with Farrah Campbell, who was a former AWS hero turned AWS employee. Nowadays, Farrah heads up both the AWS Heroes and Community Builders programmes. Links from the episode: How to become an AWS hero by Danielle Heberling S3 no longer charges for unauthorized requests AWS Heroes di…

You've probably seen some posts lately about the Believe in Serverless community. If you've been wondering what it is and why there's so much noise around it - great news! This episode is all about the community including what it is, where it's been, what it has to offer, and where it's going. Join Allen and four of the community champions, Ben Pyl…

There's no question that tech is booming all over the world. But how has it been received in places that have harder access to the internet, like Africa? Join Allen as he talks with Tobenna Nwokike about how technology is transforming Nigeria into something completely new. They discuss the cultural and economic changes brought on by tech, how easy …

In this episode, I spoke with Brian LeRoux, co-founder of begin.com and creator of the Architect framework. Brian is also an AWS Serverless Hero and is currently working on enhance.dev, an HTML-first full-stack web framework. In a wide-ranging conversation, we discussed: the Architect framework Lambdalith vs. Single-purpose functions Building a fas…

When was the last time you attended an event? It was probably virtual, right? Why is that? The tech industry has moved more and more virtual the past few years and we're starting to slowly but surely crawl our way back to in-person. In this episode, Raphael Manke and Allen Helton talk about their experiences with getting together in person and how …

In this episode, I spoke with Waldemar Hummer, founder and CTO of LocalStack. We discussed what's new in the latest version of LocalStack and highlighted some of the most interesting additions. One particular highlight for me is the ability to identify IAM permission errors between direct service integrations. For example, when an EventBridge pipe …

Event-driven architectures (EDA) is an intimidating subject for many, but don't confuse complexity with unfamiliarity. While EDA might seem unnecessarily complex, it's a necessary architectural pattern as the world goes more and more distributed. Join James Eastham and Allen Helton as they discuss all things EDA, ranging from what to put in your ev…

In this episode, I spoke with Ian Griffiths, a Technical Fellow at Endjin, a Microsoft MVP, and the author of O'Reilly's Programming C# 10.0. In this episode, we took a deep dive into Azure Functions, how it works and how it differs (significantly) from AWS Lambda. Links from the episode: Bye bye Azure Functions, hello Azure Container Apps WASI (We…

Join Johannes and Allen as they talk about the world of modern CI/CD. The duo describes exactly what CI/CD is and is not and how your pipeline might be a bit more involved than you think. Johannes shares what he considers "the best" pipeline in the industry today, describes his experience with Amazon Code Catalyst, and goes into detail about a proj…

In this episode, I spoke with Bob Hannent, the principal architect of DAZN's video playback and delivery system. This system is responsible for streaming live sporting events to millions of concurrent viewers. We discussed the many challenges that come with streaming live videos at scale. How to ensure uptime even when your CDN partners suffer an o…

They say the best way to learn is by doing, but is that always true? Does the way people effectively learn change the further they get into their career? Join Luc and Allen as they discuss continuing education as a developer and what they've experienced over the last decade. The two cover the benefits of side projects and the impact taking them to …

In this episode, I spoke with Richard Davison, the creator of the new LLRT (Low Latency Runtime) for Lambda. We talked about the motivation for a specialised JavaScript runtime for Lambda, how it achieves the insane cold start time and the trade-offs they had to make. Links from the episode: GitHub repo for LLRT API compatibility list QuickJs engin…

In this episode, I spoke with Jack Ellis, who is a co-founder of Fathom. We into the cost optimizations that he used to save Fathom $100k/year on their AWS bill. Links from the episode: Fathom's technical blog Jack's personal page Jack's newsletter Opening theme song: Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-c…

Join Allen Helton and Jeremiah Dunham as they explore math in the world of computer science. Do developers use it as much as they thought they would or is it abstracted away to a point where we have no idea? What if there was a way to use math to prove the correctness of your code instead of writing unit tests? Guess what? It's possible. Tune into …

In this episode, I spoke with Mark White, who is a principal engineer at Dunelm, a leading home furnishing retailer in the UK. We talked about Dunelm's journey from on-premise infrastructure to serverless and how they stayed agile while migrating their systems to this new paradigm safely. We discussed the challenges of shifting the engineering cult…

The serverless community loves talking about serverless. Despite the amazing innovations happening all around us, we still talk about cold starts and scalability like they are new. But what if we didn't? What would it take to get to a post-serverless era? What does post-serverless even mean? Join Jeremy Daly and Allen Helton as they discuss what th…

In this episode, I spoke with Austen Collins, founder and CEO of Serverless Inc. about the upcoming release of Serverless Framework v4. We talked about the origin of the Serverless Framework and the challenges it faces. We discussed the rationale behind the upcoming changes in v4. Including the ability to easily switch between containers and Lambda…

In this episode, I spoke with Sam Williams about his drive for work-life balance and discussed his experience of building AI-powered apps using serverless technologies. Links from the episode: Sam's YouTube channel OpenAI's Vision API smol-developer Episode 92 with Shawn Wang Production-Ready Serverless workshop Sam's course Luc van Donkersgoed's a…

In this episode, I spoke with Shawn Wang, who coined the term "AI Engineer" as a new title for engineers who are building the chains and agents that powers AI applications. This is likely to be the highest-demand engineering job of the decade. We talked about the evolution of software development and how AI is changing everything. And why ambitious…

Have you ever wondered how it works when you tell Alexa to turn off your lights and you're suddenly sitting in darkness? The Internet of Things (IoT) is all around us - from automating smart homes to alerting us when an industrial piece of equipment is malfunctioning. Join Allen and Rohan Desai as they discuss how SmartThings integrates hundreds of…

In this episode, I spoke with Patrick deBois, who is known as the "father of DevOps" as he coined the term "DevOps" in 2009. In a wide-ranging conversation, we talked about the evolution of DevOps, what it means in 2023 and how it related to "Platform Engineering". We also talked about AI, how AI technologies are impacting software development, and…

In this episode, I spoke with Hieu Do, who is a Solution Architect at FPT Software in Vietnam. As a side project, he built a hotel booking system for a friend using entirely serverless technologies. He shared his experience and learnings from building this system and how he was able to keep the cost down. After running the system for a year, the sy…

If you've been around the serverless community for any length of time, you've undoubtedly heard of Serverless Guru. But do you know what they do? Listen to Sam Lock and Allen discuss the day-in and day-out of being a serverless developer, cover the emerging importance of automating boilerplate code, and of course, dive into generative AI. About Sam…

In this episode, I spoke with Sandro Volpicella, who is a platform lead at Hashnode, a fully serverless blogging platform. He is also the co-author of AWS Fundamentals (https://awsfundamentals.com). We explored Hashnode's architecture and went deep into its caching strategy, which is a crucial ingredient of a scalable and performant blogging platfo…

In this episode, I spoke with AJ Stuyvenberg, who is an AWS Hero and staff engineer at Datadog. We discussed the findings from the latest state of serverless report and spoke about Lambda cold starts at length. AJ has done some incredible research into Lambda cold starts and shared the 4 biggest mistakes people make regarding Lambda cold starts. If…

What's the difference between developer advocacy, tech evangelism, and solutions architecture? A few years ago, all these job titles would have sounded made up. But in the mad rush we know as "cloud development", each of them have distinct roles and importance. Join Michael "Focus Otter" Liendo and Allen Helton as they dive into what makes develope…

In this episode, I spoke with Anton Babenko, who is an AWS Community Hero and creator of the Serverless.TF framework. We spoke at length about serverless development with Terraform and the problems that Serverless.TF aims to solve. We also discussed the recent seismic split in the Terraform community, with HashiCorp's license change and the initiat…

In this episode, I spoke with Ran Isenberg, who is an AWS Serverless Hero and Principal Software Architect at CyberArk. Amongst other things, we talked about platform engineering at CyberArk, how they adopted CDK and how they approach testing and tenant isolations. Links from the episode: * Ran's blog * Open positions at CyberArk * cdk-nag * Ran's …

Have you ever wondered why querying your data lakes were so slow? Or, if you're like Allen, did you ever wonder what a data lake actually is? Join Cliff Crosland as he explains how the Scanner team has changed data lakes forever by going serverless. This episode is a showcase of some brilliant engineering to solve a problem in a serverless manner. …

In this episode, I spoke with Matthew Bonig, who is an AWS DevTools Hero and co-author of The CDK Book. We talked about the Dos and Don'ts of CDK, and Matthew shared some tips on testing and how to organize your CDK project. Links from the episode: The CDK Book Advanced CDK Course Construct Hub CDK Patterns CDK Community Survey 2023 cdk.dev Wing La…

Feature flags are much more than on/off switches to hide in-progress features. They separate releases from your deployments. They allow you to slowly roll out features to your user base. They give you access to easy A/B testing. Join Steve and Allen as they talk about the impressive capabilities of AWS AppConfig, a managed service that controls you…

In this episode, I spoke with Charity Majors, who is the co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb, a popular observability platform. We had a wide-ranging conversation about Parse (and its acquisition by Facebook), observability, devops and why you should deploy on Fridays (but you still need to apply good engineering sense!). Links from the episode: Honeyc…

Are you cloud certified? In this episode of the Ready, Set, Cloud podcast Ro Ndimofor stands his ground on a hard-hitting stance against certifications. Enjoy the classic debate of "practice vs theory" as Ro and Allen discuss alternatives to certifications and if there really is a place for them in your career. About Ro Ro is a software developer a…

In this episode, I spoke with Gerard Sans, who is a Google Developer Expert and my co-author for the AppSync Masterclass. We talked about Google's new AI platform, what it entails and how Google's AI offerings compare to OpenAI. For example, what can you do with Bard and Duet AI and why one might consider using them instead of ChatGPT or CoPilot. W…

Java is notorious for slow cold starts in Lambda. But why? What can you do to make them faster? Is it time to ditch Python and make your way to the JVM? Join Vadym and Allen as they talk about Java's journey in serverless and explore some of the optimization techniques developers use to mitigate cold starts like Snap Start, priming, and using Graal…

In this episode, I spoke with Heitor Lessa, who is a principal solution architect at AWS that specializes in serverless. He's also the man behind the popular AWS Lambda Powertools project which is available in a number of languages. We talked about the history of the Lambda Powertools project, and the challenges and learnings from building in publi…

Have you ever wondered how MidJourney or ChatGPT work? Generative AI has taken the world by storm with millions of adopters using it daily. But how does it work? How does it go from a question you type in a dialog box to a meaningful answer or perfectly drawn image on screen? Join Matt and Allen as they discuss how completion models work, explain t…

In this episode, I spoke with Matt Carey, who's a senior engineer at Aleios, a premium AWS consultant that focuses on serverless technologies. The focus of our conversation was LangChain, Matt explained what it is and demoed some AI applications that he has developed with LangChain. Such as the popular Quivr app and Code Review GPT. If you want to …

In this episode, I spoke with Randall Hunt, who's the VP of Cloud Strategy and Innovation at Caylent and had previously worked at Vendia, Facebook AI, AWS and SpaceX. We talked about AWS Bedrock, what is it and how it works and saw a demo of a simple AI application built with Bedrock and LangChain. Randall explained the advantages of using Bedrock …

Many people say DevOps is dead with the introduction of serverless. Responsibilities change from infrastructure management to platform engineering. But what happens when you throw generative AI into the mix? How does this shake up what we now know as DevOps and what does it hold for the future? Is DevOps going to die? Omkar and Allen talk about the…

Serverless services make it incredibly easy to start building. They reduce time to market, improve uptime (generally), and lower overall costs when starting up. But there's an entire world to consider before going serverless that most of us forget about - business operations. Aside from shifting ownership from hardware to software, you also have ro…

Anyone who's heard of serverless has heard of cold starts. But have you heard about proactive initialization? This is a newly published service enhancement from the AWS Lambda team that pre-warms execution environments of on-demand functions. This enhancement results in reduced cold start times and costs consumers no extra money to take advantage o…

In the serverless world, we sometimes take the word "managed" a little too seriously. We often forget that not ALL software responsibilities are taken over by cloud vendors. Oftentimes responsibilities are shared between builders and cloud vendors, like security. In this episode, Allen and Jason talk about ways to improve your security posture star…

People throw around the phrase "app modernization" and "cloud migration" far too often. What do they mean? Are they the same thing? In this episode, Allen sits down with Alex Kearns to navigate the twists and turns of the cloud to find out the answer. The two talk about different strategies of modernization like the strangler pattern and learn how …

The tech community is not just about networking or acquiring new skills - it's about discovery and mutual growth brought on by impactful interactions. Often seen as an mysterious black box, Allen and Jonah dive in to clarify some of the confusion around the tech community. First of all, what is it? How do you start on your own journey? And most imp…

Dive into the heart of serverless architecture with the brilliantly unorthodox Dax Raad in this episode of the "Ready, Set, Cloud" podcast. Renowned for his sharp insights and unconventional approach to... everything, Dax brings his perspective to the world of serverless application development. In this conversation, he shares insights on structuri…

In this episode, I caught up with Ben Kehoe, who is an AWS Serverless Hero and one of the earliest adopters of serverless technologies. In a wide-ranging conversation, we discussed many topics around serverless and AI, including: The natural evolution of marketing terms and the need to focus on specific functional characteristics rather than defend…