Why you should consider Rust for your Lambdas
Rust is such a cool language, even though it might take a bit to get the hang of it. But trust me, the payoff is huge. As someone who’s all into serverless stuff and loves playing around with AWS, I’ve been digging into how to write AWS Lambda functions in Rust and whether it’s worth the sweat. MEGA-Spoiler: Yep, you guessed it from the title - it’s totally worth it. And in this article, you’re gonna find out why, so stick around! Okay, so there’s this pic in the article of Morpheus holding a Lambda in one…
Building x86 Rust containers from Mac Silicon
I recently struggled to build an x86_64 container for a web app written in Rust from my Mac Silicon. I eventually figured out a working solution that also heavily reduced the size of the container image. In this article, I will walk you through this solution! This solution involves a bunch of interesting technology, so if nothing else, it’s going to be an opportunity to explore these cool topics: Rust (of course) Docker (of course) Docker multi-stage builds Linux Alpine musl libc QEMU RusTLS Jemalloc The…
The Definition of Senior: A Look at the expectations for Software Engineers
In today’s fast-paced tech industry, the role of a senior software engineer has become increasingly important and something many engineers strive to be recognized as. But are you senior yet? And what’s expected from you a senior? The truth is that answering these questions is a very subjective matter and different people or different companies might give very different answers. In this article, I’ll try to give you my take, based on my opinion and personal experience. So let’s get to it! This article is…
2022 - A year in Review
Yup, 2022 flew and it’s that time of the year again. I want to write that boring post that I am the only one to look forward to writing and I don’t expect anyone to read. Well, if you are brave enough to go ahead and read it, let me say thank you and then, to follow the tradition, let me greet you with a boring GIF: A yawning monkey Becoming an AWS Serverless Hero Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room, the biggest (and most unexpected) achievement of the year: being awarded the title of AWS…
Invite-only microsites with Next.js and AirTable
I recently needed to create an invite-only Next.js-powered microsite (for my wedding 🌸) and in this article I’m going to show you how I went about creating invite codes and how I implemented code validation in the app, using Next.js API endpoints and AirTable as a lightweight backend. The use case and the tech stack 24 June 2022 was the best day of my life. Seriously, I got married with the human being I love the most and everything was just perfect. But we are not here to talk about my wedding, right…
AWS Solution Architect Professional exam, my notes and tips
Hello everyone, I am really happy to share with you that I recently got my AWS Solution Architect Professional certification (SAP-C01) 🎉 In this article I talk about my experience with the exam, how I prepared for it and share a few tips that can, hopefully, help you if you are preparing for the exam. Who is the AWS Solution Architect Professional certification for I’d recommend you embarking on this challenge only if you already have a few years of AWS experience and you already managed to explore a few…
2021 - A year in review
A post where I reflect on my professional life in 2021 as a look ahead for what to expect in 2022. As usual, let me tell you that I write this kind of posts for myself and I don’t expect other people to be able to read this and be engaged. So, if you really feel like you want to venture forward and have a peek on my 2021, well, I am flattered… but make sure to grab a coffee, because this might get a little (just a little…) boring! boring stuff ahead Yes, this GIF is probably the least boring element of the…
Create resources conditionally with CDK
Did you ever need to create a resource based on a condition in CDK? I recently needed to do that and finding a viable solution for this problem took me longer than I originally anticipated. In this article I will try to summarise what I learned and present my solution. In short, we will learn about the CfnCondition construct and how it can be used to create CloudFormation conditions. Then we will see how to attach condition to low level construct. Throughout this article, we will discuss these concepts with…
Provision an Ubuntu-based EC2 instance with CDK
You are using CDK and you need to provision an EC2 instance. What if you prefer to use Ubuntu over Amazon Linux? In this article, we will see exactly how to do that, and, hopefully, we will learn a bunch of interesting things in the process! I have to be honest, I am more on the Ubuntu camp than I am in the Amazon Linux one… It’s a subjective preference. I find myself more comfortable with apt, snap, systemd and other Ubuntu nuances than I am with yum and other things in Amazon Linux. Plus, I find easier to…
How to send gzipped requests with boto3
I recently needed to send a big payload to CloudWatch and I managed to increase my chances of staying within the AWS payload size limit by using gzip encoding on the request body with boto3. Unfortunately, with boto3, gzip encoding is not enabled by default and it can’t be turned on with some simple boolean flag. To make things worse, as of today, there isn’t a great body of documentation or examples available on how to achieve this. Or maybe I am just terrible at googling… I had to go down the rabbit hole…