Real World Serverless with theburningmonk

Hosted by Yan Cui

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Episodes

115

Latest episode

Apr 2025

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EN-GB

About the show

A podcast where we talk about real-world use of Serverless technologies from engineers who work with them day-to-day. We will discuss use cases, why they chose serverless and the pain points and challenges they face. If you want to know what it's REALLY like to work with serverless, this is the show for you.

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60 recent

April 19, 2025Episode 11648 min

#116: AI Agents, MCP and the problems with AI benchmarks | ft. Matt Carey

In this episode, I spoke with Matt Carey, founding AI engineer at StackOne, founder of AI Demo Days and member of the OpenUK AI Advisory Board.Everyone needs a friend who works in AI to help them filter the AI news and get the signals from the noise. Matt is that friend for me!We discussed AI agents, MCP, and the challenges of AI benchmarks, which help explain the disconnect between the benchmark results and the anecdotal experiences of AI users, such as myself.Links from the episode:Google's whitepaper on AI agentsAnthropic Building Effective AI AgentsSimon Willison on XThorsten Ball's Joy & Curiosity newsletterAI Demo DaysMCP has a prompt injection problemOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

April 2, 2025Episode 1151 hr 3 min

#115: Introducing LocalStack v4!

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 visualise and troubleshoot event-driven architectures end-to-end and quickly identify problems such as missing IAM permission.Lots of exciting new features in LocalStack v4!This episode include a live demo of LocalStack v4. To get the most from the demo, please watch the episode on YouTube here.Links from the episode:My conversation with Waldemar after LocalStack v3LocalStack v4 announcementMy blog post on when to use Step Functions vs running everything in LambdaOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

March 12, 2025Episode 11448 min

#114: Best practices for building a multi-tenant system with Khawaja Shams

In this episode, I spoke with Khawaja Shams, co-founder of Momento, about cell-based architectures and how it allows Momento to scale to millions of transactions per second (TPS) while maintaining a healthy blast radius within their multi-tenant system.Links from the episode:MomentoKhawaja on XKhawaja on LinkedInBelieve In Serverless communityOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.

February 5, 2025Episode 11345 min

#113: Why you need Knowledge Graphs for your AI chatbot | ft. Aniket Mitra

In this episode, I spoke with Aniket Mitra, founder of CW, to learn more about knowledge graphs and how they are making a comeback in the era of AI and LLMs.Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.

January 29, 2025Episode 11259 min

#112: Better Developer Experience for Event-Driven Architectures | ft. Alex Bouchard, co-founder of Hookdeck

In this episode, I spoke with Alex Bouchard, co-founder and CTO of Hookdeck, to learn more about Hookdeck and how it differs from Amazon EventBridge.This episode contains a live demo of Hookdeck, for the best viewing experience, please watch the recording on YouTube here.Alex gave me a demo of Hookdeck, which has some nice features for addressing common developer experience problems with EventBridge. For example:Deliver events to local targetsAudit history of event deliveriesIssues page of failed event deliveriesReplay failed eventsLinks from the episode: Check out HookdeckOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.

January 17, 2025Episode 11151 min

#111 - EventCatalog Revolutionizes Governance in Event-Driven Architectures | ft. David Boyne

In this episode, I spoke with David Boyne, the creator of EventCatalog, to learn more about the most common challenges with Event-Driven Architectures and how EventCatalog can solve the governance problem - how events are versioned, schema'd, discovered and tested.This episode includes a short demo of EventCatalog, if you want to see the demo in action, then check out the video version on YouTube here.Links from the episode:EventCatalogWinglangOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.

October 24, 2024Episode 10955 min

#109: Building serverless apps in PHP with Bref | ft Matthieu Napoli

Thank you to Momento for supporting this episode. Momento's real-time data platform empowers developers to build innovative products faster and more reliably than ever before. Visit gomomento.co/theburningmonk for more information.In this episode, I spoke with Matthieu Napoli about the Bref framework for developing serverless applications in PHP - how it works, why PHP and how it compares with Laravel Vapor.This episode includes a short demo of Bref, if you want to see the demo in action, then check out the video version on YouTube here.Links from the episode:Bref frameworkOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.

September 20, 2024Episode 1081 hr 2 min

#108: Lambda on Rust with James Eastham

Thank you to Hookdeck for sponsoring this episode. If you're looking to level-up your event-driven architecture, then check out their serverless event gateway at hookdeck.com/theburningmonk and help support this channel.James Eastham is a developer advocate at Datadog and co-author of "Crafting Lambda Functions in Rust". In this episode, we dive into writing Lambda functions in Rust and why you should invest in learning Rust.Links from the episode:NSA whitepaper on memory safetyJulian Wood’s Lambda internals talk at re:Invent 2022Jame's YouTube channelCrafting Lambda Functions in RustEp106 on middy with Luciano MamminoEp97 on LLRT (the superfast JavaScript runtime for Lambda)Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.

August 27, 2024Episode 10752 min

#107: How to Have a Successful Cloud Career in 2024 | ft. Andrew Brown

Thank you to Momento for supporting this episode. Momento's real-time data platform empowers developers to build innovative products faster and more reliably than ever before. Visit gomomento.co/theburningmonk for more information.I spoke with Andrew Brown, renowned educator in the cloud space, to get his take on how cloud learners can break into the cloud and forge a successful career.Links from the episode:Andrew's paid coursesAndrew's free coursesAndrew's AWS examplesOpening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

August 13, 2024Episode 10645 min

#106: Rust with Lambda, easy-mode Rust & future of Middy | ft. Luciano Mammino

Thank you to Hookdeck for sponsoring this episode. If you're looking to level-up your event-driven architecture, then check out their serverless event gateway at hookdeck.com/theburningmonk and help support this channel.AWS Serverless Hero Luciano Mammino shares the history of Middy, the popular middleware engine for AWS Lambda functions; why he's sold on writing Lambda functions in Rust and why you should too!Links from the episode:AWS Bites channelMiddyHow to sponsor MiddyCrafting Lambda Functions in RustEasy mode RustUsing Node.js ES modules and top-level await in AWS LambdaUsing Middy with TypescriptEp97 on LLRT (the superfast JavaScript runtime for Lambda)Opening theme song:Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeodLink: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-mondayLicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0