Learn By Doing Newsletter

It is hard to believe that we are on the ninth week of this AWS newsletter with blockchain news and fun coding projects mixed in. It has been a blast creating this curated resource and I look forward to producing more cloud, blockchain, and coding newsletters in the futre.

This week we dive into a new Infrastructure-as-Code tool, Pulumi. AWS rolled out the ability to trigger Lambda functions off of SQS, this has been a long requested feature and is sure to produce a ton of interesting blog posts. Then in the world of Ethereum the Swarm POC continues to evolve with the third release.

Check those out and many more in this weeks edition of the Learn By Doing newsletter!

☁️ Cloud

Simplified Multi-Factor Authentication for AWSIf you don't have multifactor authentication enabled on your AWS account, shame on you. This article shows just how easy it is to add multi factor authentication to your account with a tool like awless. Bonus points, multi-factor authentication is prime question on any AWS certification exam.

Getting Started with AWS: Up and Running with Elastic Beanstalk in MinutesIn this blog post we get started with Elasticbeanstalk in just a few simple steps. When it comes to learning AWS basics, Elasticbeanstalk is a great place to start. Simply create your application, setup the environment, and then deploy your code. It does a great job at shielding new cloud developers from infrastructure concepts that they may not be ready for yet.

Your Infrastructure as Code CloudFormation Vs Terraform?The great debate, CloudFormation or Terraform? These aren't the only two screwdrivers in the infrastructure as code debtate, but most would argue they are the title contenders. This is a great read on the differences between the two and why you might choose one over the other.

Build Your Own Free, Serverless Comment Box - Part 1I am a little iffy on Contentful as I don't quite see the value it brings just yet. That said, a lot of folks are using it to host their own blogs and even business static sites. It has a nice API that is straightforward to incorporate into your build process. This is a cool post on how to add Serverless comment boxes to static sites instead of relying on a service like Disqus.

Semi-Autonomous Driving Using EC2 Spot Instances at MapboxThis is a choice cut from the AWS blog courtesy of Will White at Mapbox. I am always impressed by what folks are doing with the EC2 Spot Market and this post fits right into that category. I like the idea of using the termination notice to let your on-demand group know it is time to wake up.

Algolia indexing with Serverless WebhooksMartyn does a great job at introducing the simplicity and power of the Serverless framework. Here he dives into combining Google Cloud Functions with Algolia to create a streamlined API endpoint for inserting into an index.

Effectively using AWS Reserved InstancesAWS cost calculators have been springing up left and right as organizations try to perform cost optimization. It turns out for very EC2 heavy workloads there is an easier approach, Reserved Instances, or better known as RI. This is a cool look at how the team at Stripe have managed their AWS costs by optimizng their RI workloads. They even monitor it, what a novel idea.

SQS lambda trigger now showing up!It's official, kinda, that SQS triggers are rolling out to AWS Lambda functions. This has been a long requested feature and I am sure there are going to be some awesome use cases showing up in demos soon.

Hello Pulumi - A multi-language, multi-cloud development platformInfrastructure as code has a new tool in town in the form of Joe Duffy and crew. Pulumi is the latest in the infrastructure as code tool chain and I dare say it might be the one that has me the most intrigued. Typically when it comes to IAC I choose Terraform, but I have always wanted to use the power of the languages I already knew. Pulumi aims to solve exactly that and be able to span multi cloud.

Scaling a monitoring platform to over 9,600 bank integrationsWhen it comes to fintech companies, Plaid is probably the most well known. It is used behind the scenes to power other well known companies like Stripe, Venmo, and Robinhood. This is an in-depth look at how the internal engineering team leveraged AWS Kinesis and other services to improve their monitoring/alerting solution. There is some tid bits in here that are worth taking back to you own projects.

📣 Blockchain

Announcing Swarm Proof-of-Concept Release 3Ethereum dropped the latest in their line of proof of concepts for what is known as the Swarm client. The intention of the Swarm client is to enable decentralized file uploads and downloads to the cloud. Effectively enabling the network to support modern web stacks and host web sites.

Code && Languages

Keeping a Jamstack Site Feeling Fresh With Recent TweetsAutomating content is becoming one my favorite things to leverage automated pipelines for. I don't mean using tools to create content for me, that just leads to shitty content. But, create tools to populate my curated content to many different locations automatically. This a cool post about doing just that with your own tweets.

Firefox developer tools now has 'Accessibility inspector'Web accessbility testing has been far harder than it needs to be up to this point. Front-end developers spend their entire day in web browsers and their accompanying developer tools. It is great to see Firefox taking a step forward by allowing you to analyze of how your page is doing in terms of accessibility standards right from your own tooling.

5 Awesome Boilerplates/Templates For VueJS ProjectsUnderstanding how VueJS works and where to get started with it can be a challenge if you are new to the space. This is normal for any new frameworks. But, the various frameworks are learning from one another and just about any new framework is releasing starter templates. This lowers the bar to entry as you can start from a known template to start climbing the learning curve.

Our Vision for Rust and WebAssemblyThe Rust language has been picking up steam in recent months. Think of this post as their short-long term roadmap for the language and how it will integrate with things like WebAssembly.

MySQL High Availability at GitHubGitHub loves Microsoft now, but they also really love MySQL apparently. To the point to where they are running dozens of MySQL clusters across multiple data centers. Get a peek at how they obtain MySQL high availability with some internal tooling and balancing tradeoffs.

Using API Gateways to Facilitate Your Transition from Monolith to MicroservicesAs companies big and small begin the battle of monolithic vs microservices they are facing interesting dilemas. In that with a microservice architecture you typically are deploying new infrastructure, but what happens to the monolith? How do you gradually decommission it and move over to your new services and infrastructure? There is trade offs across the board and I found this article to be insightful in highlighting them.

Backpropagation algorithm visual explanation When it comes neural networks and deep learning the back propagation algorithm is key. There is some strong math involved here but its actually relatively easy to understand with this example and the formulas are handy for learning more.

I Don’t Believe in Full-Stack EngineeringEveryone leaving CS programs and code schools alike hears that they need to become a full stack developer. Hell, I have even said it myself to more than one person and consider myself to be one. However, as Robin articulates very well in this post, true full stack engineering is a bit of a myth. Front-end development is a full time job nowadays, writing backend services is as well, and so is provisioning AWS infrastructure. So, are the days of true full stack development going to come to an end?

😎 Cool find of the week

The motherload of handy Devtools tipsIf you are just getting started with web development you need to get familiar with Developer tools in the browser. Even if your a seasoned veteran you probably didn't know some of the tips that are burried in this treasure trove. Check it out, use the ones you like, and make sure you thank the person that created this.