1 00:00:00,150 --> 00:00:03,300 Matt: This is born out of our frustrations with it's 2 00:00:03,310 --> 00:00:06,540 so hard to do anything for the first time on AWS. 3 00:00:11,780 --> 00:00:14,640 Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, I'm Corey Quinn. 4 00:00:14,859 --> 00:00:19,450 My returning guest today is Matt Coulter, who is a Senior Portfolio 5 00:00:19,450 --> 00:00:23,509 Architect at Liberty Mutual, but oh so much more than that. 6 00:00:23,880 --> 00:00:26,589 It's been about the Sunday since we've spoken, Matt. 7 00:00:26,610 --> 00:00:27,369 What have you been up to? 8 00:00:27,500 --> 00:00:30,060 Matt: Yeah, it's probably been about a year since we talked 9 00:00:30,060 --> 00:00:33,780 on this and I've been continuing a lot of my community work. 10 00:00:33,880 --> 00:00:36,270 I took a bit of a step back for a while, but starting to build 11 00:00:36,309 --> 00:00:39,589 up again with a lot of the external work for patterns and things. 12 00:00:40,129 --> 00:00:44,699 Corey: This episode's been sponsored by our friends at Panoptica, part of Cisco. 13 00:00:44,959 --> 00:00:48,720 This is one of those real rarities where it's a security product that 14 00:00:48,720 --> 00:00:54,330 you can get started with for free But also scale to enterprise grade. 15 00:00:54,819 --> 00:00:55,480 Take a look. 16 00:00:55,800 --> 00:00:59,110 In fact, if you sign up for an enterprise account, they'll even throw you 17 00:00:59,110 --> 00:01:04,110 one of the limited, heavily discounted AWS skill builder licenses they got. 18 00:01:04,269 --> 00:01:06,600 Because believe it or not, unlike so many 19 00:01:06,600 --> 00:01:10,059 companies out there, they do understand AWS. 20 00:01:10,425 --> 00:01:12,935 To learn more, please visit panoptica. 21 00:01:12,985 --> 00:01:15,745 app slash last week in AWS. 22 00:01:15,955 --> 00:01:17,625 That's panoptica. 23 00:01:17,625 --> 00:01:20,735 app slash last week in AWS. 24 00:01:21,464 --> 00:01:23,935 The community work you do has always been interesting 25 00:01:23,945 --> 00:01:27,394 and hard to classify, if that makes any sense. 26 00:01:27,775 --> 00:01:30,605 Maybe I'm oversensitive to that particular challenge, given I deal with 27 00:01:30,605 --> 00:01:34,195 some of it myself, but you do a fair bit of, you do a fair number of things. 28 00:01:34,195 --> 00:01:37,425 You're a You are a serverless hero, to my understanding. 29 00:01:37,435 --> 00:01:38,485 You're a hero of some sort. 30 00:01:38,565 --> 00:01:39,665 Is it DevTools hero? 31 00:01:39,805 --> 00:01:41,315 I can't, I can't keep it straight anymore. 32 00:01:41,555 --> 00:01:43,315 Matt: I live somewhere in between DevTools and 33 00:01:43,315 --> 00:01:46,105 serverless, so both groups claim me, so it's all right. 34 00:01:46,455 --> 00:01:50,955 Corey: You're also a conference organizer for the CD, the first Belfast AWS 35 00:01:50,995 --> 00:01:53,575 Community Day is coming up, and I'm sure we'll talk about that in a bit. 36 00:01:53,625 --> 00:01:55,405 You've done a lot of CDK stuff. 37 00:01:55,715 --> 00:02:00,685 Uh, with the CDK Community Day, the CDK Patterns site, that has been doing 38 00:02:00,685 --> 00:02:04,475 a lot of interesting things as far as not making me reinvent the wheel 39 00:02:04,485 --> 00:02:08,505 when I want to do something involving AWS, which is deeply appreciated. 40 00:02:09,164 --> 00:02:10,674 Where do you start and where do you stop? 41 00:02:10,804 --> 00:02:13,294 Matt: The funny thing for me is, so, I always try to start 42 00:02:13,294 --> 00:02:16,415 with external, which is why a lot of it is the community stuff 43 00:02:16,415 --> 00:02:20,440 that people see, because For me, if, if I personally struggle 44 00:02:20,440 --> 00:02:22,760 with something, I'm like, all right, let's get this out there. 45 00:02:22,760 --> 00:02:23,910 So the next person doesn't. 46 00:02:24,060 --> 00:02:27,299 And a lot of it started with like the CDK work. 47 00:02:27,300 --> 00:02:30,790 A lot of it started bigger than it probably should have because whenever 48 00:02:30,790 --> 00:02:33,780 I started doing the external community work, it was over the pandemic. 49 00:02:33,910 --> 00:02:38,090 So everything, you know, Sort of had a lens on it that amplified things. 50 00:02:38,470 --> 00:02:42,280 So instead of starting local and going global, I pretty much started global, 51 00:02:42,290 --> 00:02:46,170 created a conference that thousands of people have watched, and then went, 52 00:02:46,310 --> 00:02:49,699 I don't like the fact that I haven't done as much locally as what I could 53 00:02:49,699 --> 00:02:53,090 have done given I had all these eyes on what I was creating, which is 54 00:02:53,090 --> 00:02:57,779 why I started coming back to Belfast and started up the user group here. 55 00:02:58,010 --> 00:03:01,080 We've started doing regular meetings as opposed to, it was 56 00:03:01,120 --> 00:03:03,990 pretty sporadic in the past how the local community could meet. 57 00:03:04,080 --> 00:03:06,070 And then the community actually approached 58 00:03:06,070 --> 00:03:08,749 us and said, can you run a community day? 59 00:03:08,890 --> 00:03:10,480 And that's where we're like, yes, let's go. 60 00:03:10,510 --> 00:03:11,549 That's the whole point of this. 61 00:03:11,720 --> 00:03:13,379 It's let's get people excited. 62 00:03:13,590 --> 00:03:15,919 Let's try and help other people and let's grow together. 63 00:03:16,109 --> 00:03:19,119 Corey: Running an in person conference is a heavy lift. 64 00:03:19,119 --> 00:03:21,209 I've been in the periphery of a few of them myself. 65 00:03:21,229 --> 00:03:23,749 There's a reason I don't do that as a primary rule. 66 00:03:24,059 --> 00:03:28,480 And online events, are in many ways easier, depending 67 00:03:28,480 --> 00:03:31,960 upon how you want to view your definition of online event. 68 00:03:32,150 --> 00:03:34,890 I mean, at some level, it's, I'm doing a live stream, come and watch. 69 00:03:35,370 --> 00:03:37,429 Most go a little bit further beyond that. 70 00:03:37,440 --> 00:03:39,740 There's often a, there's interaction and the rest. 71 00:03:39,880 --> 00:03:42,439 I'm curious, what you've noticed is the key differences between 72 00:03:42,459 --> 00:03:45,240 building events in person versus the virtual side of it. 73 00:03:45,390 --> 00:03:48,290 Matt: For sure, I definitely think virtual is easier 74 00:03:48,290 --> 00:03:51,369 in many ways because For instance, with CDK Day, the 75 00:03:51,369 --> 00:03:54,109 organizing team was quite literally across the globe. 76 00:03:54,500 --> 00:03:56,630 We had most continents represented with the 77 00:03:56,630 --> 00:03:58,459 group that were just excited to come together. 78 00:03:58,649 --> 00:04:00,899 Corey: So someone has a terrible time, uh, as far as the 79 00:04:00,910 --> 00:04:02,839 time zone goes, as far as when the call is going to be. 80 00:04:02,989 --> 00:04:03,540 Matt: Exactly. 81 00:04:03,599 --> 00:04:06,940 We had to rotate at all times to hopefully get most of the group. 82 00:04:07,110 --> 00:04:08,269 It was the same with speakers. 83 00:04:08,269 --> 00:04:10,329 We always had people asking us, could we run 84 00:04:10,459 --> 00:04:12,019 the event on the other side of the globe? 85 00:04:12,029 --> 00:04:15,045 Because You know, like the main struggle with virtual 86 00:04:15,045 --> 00:04:18,465 is time zones for both organizers and speakers. 87 00:04:18,575 --> 00:04:21,904 Whenever you start going to in person, you still have all the challenges 88 00:04:21,904 --> 00:04:24,915 you had with remote in that you need to make sure you get diverse 89 00:04:24,925 --> 00:04:28,145 speakers coming in, you need to make sure the event actually stands 90 00:04:28,145 --> 00:04:30,990 for what it's meant to stand for and doesn't, you know, like, Sell 91 00:04:30,990 --> 00:04:34,720 out immediately in terms of pushing one product or one point of view. 92 00:04:34,720 --> 00:04:35,660 It needs to be balanced. 93 00:04:35,820 --> 00:04:40,720 So that all still exists when you go in person, but then you also deal with it 94 00:04:40,720 --> 00:04:44,930 is quite literally the world around you and the sense of stuff already exists. 95 00:04:45,170 --> 00:04:49,320 People are already used to on a Monday at 2pm, I go here. 96 00:04:49,680 --> 00:04:53,590 So if you're now sent, please come here instead of going in your original route. 97 00:04:53,915 --> 00:04:56,445 It's very different to just say click this link and join us 98 00:04:56,455 --> 00:04:59,255 whenever you're listening in the car on the way home, for instance. 99 00:04:59,405 --> 00:05:02,465 Corey: Browser tabs are a lot cheaper than tickets to an event. 100 00:05:02,545 --> 00:05:06,005 Matt: Yeah, and it's, it's, people really need to believe in the event 101 00:05:06,005 --> 00:05:10,035 that you're hosting to give away their time to physically be present. 102 00:05:10,174 --> 00:05:14,275 And it's, it, I've discovered that that combined with it just costs, 103 00:05:14,365 --> 00:05:18,000 it does cost more money to run it locally, even though We, we've had 104 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:21,290 an amazing support from the, the companies and communities around here 105 00:05:21,290 --> 00:05:24,719 where we're running this thing on a shoestring budget, but it's a case 106 00:05:24,719 --> 00:05:29,399 of like, virtually you can just stand up StreamYard and away you go. 107 00:05:29,460 --> 00:05:30,960 You've pretty much got a conference. 108 00:05:31,119 --> 00:05:32,789 Corey: You have to worry about things like venue space 109 00:05:32,789 --> 00:05:35,739 and even getting coffee is a logistical challenge. 110 00:05:35,760 --> 00:05:39,090 It's, I've often said that it's with AWS, it's amazing they can even wind up 111 00:05:39,090 --> 00:05:42,480 getting coffee for reInvent, let alone the orchestration of what that entire 112 00:05:42,480 --> 00:05:46,599 event must be to, to get across the line of its current production value. 113 00:05:46,750 --> 00:05:49,900 Forgive my ignorance on this, but do you find that there's enough 114 00:05:49,970 --> 00:05:54,330 of a community in the Belfast area to put together a conference? 115 00:05:54,330 --> 00:05:55,520 I mean, how large are you folks? 116 00:05:55,650 --> 00:05:58,419 This is also my American ethnocentrism speaking here, where it's like, 117 00:05:58,420 --> 00:06:01,149 Wow, I figure that all the people who care about this are in Seattle 118 00:06:01,149 --> 00:06:04,879 and San Francisco, and then a smattering of other places that I can't 119 00:06:04,879 --> 00:06:07,650 find on a map because we haven't been at war with those places lately. 120 00:06:07,730 --> 00:06:09,620 That's how we as Americans learn geography. 121 00:06:09,745 --> 00:06:11,974 How sizable is the, is the community out there? 122 00:06:12,075 --> 00:06:12,315 Matt: Yeah. 123 00:06:12,315 --> 00:06:15,094 So it's, it's actually, I'm quite passionate about this one 124 00:06:15,094 --> 00:06:17,865 because everybody thinks of Ireland and they go straight to Dublin 125 00:06:18,194 --> 00:06:22,205 and think because like Microsoft's down there and AWS is down 126 00:06:22,205 --> 00:06:25,564 there that that must be the big tech hub for Ireland as a whole. 127 00:06:25,664 --> 00:06:30,775 But Belfast is very, very dense in terms of tech companies in the city center. 128 00:06:30,905 --> 00:06:33,445 And they're, they're not just pure tech companies. 129 00:06:33,445 --> 00:06:34,015 You know what I mean? 130 00:06:34,075 --> 00:06:35,565 People that just build tech for tech. 131 00:06:35,865 --> 00:06:38,155 We're talking about the tech hub of like insurance 132 00:06:38,155 --> 00:06:40,545 companies, finance companies, those kind of things. 133 00:06:40,685 --> 00:06:44,505 So whenever we started running these events, we've, uh, without 134 00:06:44,515 --> 00:06:47,344 very much effort in terms of marketing, the numbers have been 135 00:06:47,435 --> 00:06:50,684 50, 60, 70 people turning up to just the regular user group. 136 00:06:50,825 --> 00:06:54,375 And given that that's been growing every time we run it, we're pretty sure 137 00:06:54,385 --> 00:06:57,545 we'll easily get over a hundred pretty soon, just in the regular user groups. 138 00:06:57,885 --> 00:07:01,165 So it's, it's sizable and it's a voice that hasn't really been 139 00:07:01,165 --> 00:07:04,425 represented on a global stage because I don't hear my accent very often. 140 00:07:04,625 --> 00:07:06,935 So it's, it's a motivation for me to try and get 141 00:07:07,155 --> 00:07:09,335 more people in America to know the name Belfast. 142 00:07:09,494 --> 00:07:13,065 Corey: Do you find that there's a particular sway that the community 143 00:07:13,074 --> 00:07:16,704 goes in when you, when you talk in Belfast versus globally? 144 00:07:16,715 --> 00:07:19,975 And, and what I mean by that is I used to live in Los Angeles, but 145 00:07:19,975 --> 00:07:23,515 I was doing a consulting project in Iowa every week for a while. 146 00:07:23,915 --> 00:07:27,775 And when I went to user group meetings in Los Angeles, we talked about things 147 00:07:27,775 --> 00:07:31,445 like how to, in this era, 2010 or so, it was about speeding automation. 148 00:07:31,695 --> 00:07:35,475 And when I went to Linux user group meetings out in Iowa 149 00:07:35,485 --> 00:07:38,145 instead, they were talking about how do you sneak Linux 150 00:07:38,145 --> 00:07:41,344 into your primarily Windows work environment, which was a 151 00:07:41,555 --> 00:07:44,115 bit of a different flavor and a somewhat extreme example. 152 00:07:44,474 --> 00:07:48,414 But do you find that there are smaller or more common areas 153 00:07:48,414 --> 00:07:51,265 of focus in a local user group as opposed to a global one? 154 00:07:51,395 --> 00:07:51,965 Matt: For sure. 155 00:07:51,965 --> 00:07:54,944 I mean, locally, the big thing people are known for 156 00:07:54,944 --> 00:07:58,344 here is the serverless community is very strong here. 157 00:07:58,364 --> 00:08:01,594 But even outside of that, the thing that Belfast is known for is 158 00:08:01,724 --> 00:08:04,864 engineers and people in the software development industry as a whole. 159 00:08:05,405 --> 00:08:08,145 can churn well architected solutions out quickly. 160 00:08:08,325 --> 00:08:11,575 So the focus here is really on, okay, this is great. 161 00:08:11,575 --> 00:08:12,205 What did you build? 162 00:08:12,205 --> 00:08:13,265 But what was the impact? 163 00:08:13,265 --> 00:08:15,185 And then what can I take away from that? 164 00:08:15,215 --> 00:08:18,075 So people are very willing to pivot as opposed to 165 00:08:18,075 --> 00:08:20,515 jump in and be like, this is my technology till I die. 166 00:08:20,705 --> 00:08:22,885 So you get these fascinating stories of these big 167 00:08:22,895 --> 00:08:25,795 companies out there that someone from Belfast was almost 168 00:08:25,795 --> 00:08:28,745 dropped in and they saved them and then just left again. 169 00:08:28,945 --> 00:08:31,135 And that's, that's really what the story is of this city. 170 00:08:31,335 --> 00:08:34,695 Corey: I saw a great tweet this morning where someone was talking 171 00:08:34,695 --> 00:08:38,975 about how Docker is dead and Kubernetes is dead and serverless is dead. 172 00:08:38,985 --> 00:08:42,225 If, of course, by dead you mean it is now established, stable, and there are 173 00:08:42,225 --> 00:08:46,375 defined processes around it, rather than figuring out everything as we go. 174 00:08:46,794 --> 00:08:50,785 And that resonated in a bunch of ways, just from the idea 175 00:08:50,785 --> 00:08:53,995 that now it's not about the technology anymore, so much 176 00:08:53,995 --> 00:08:56,755 as it is about what the technology empowers folks to do. 177 00:08:56,915 --> 00:09:00,894 Matt: It's funny because whenever Whenever the term serverless is dead, 178 00:09:00,944 --> 00:09:04,224 got out there, a lot of people had this real visceral reaction to it, 179 00:09:04,224 --> 00:09:07,795 where it was like, if it's said on social media, it makes it true, almost. 180 00:09:07,805 --> 00:09:09,474 And there's always something behind it. 181 00:09:09,564 --> 00:09:10,194 Corey: Yeah. 182 00:09:10,204 --> 00:09:11,915 Matt: Whenever, whenever it goes that deep. 183 00:09:12,014 --> 00:09:15,124 But I think the interesting thing about it is, The 184 00:09:15,124 --> 00:09:18,174 marketing has shifted and that's where people are saying 185 00:09:18,314 --> 00:09:20,834 that, oh, I feel like it's not what I signed up for. 186 00:09:20,944 --> 00:09:24,474 But it has matured to the point that now it's, it's not the 187 00:09:24,474 --> 00:09:27,574 risk it once was to say, let's build a serverless architecture. 188 00:09:27,944 --> 00:09:31,844 It meets most needs, but at the same time, the complexity has grown. 189 00:09:32,209 --> 00:09:34,510 That it's not just, well, it just works. 190 00:09:34,810 --> 00:09:37,300 It's somewhere in the middle and it's the same with the likes of Kubernetes. 191 00:09:37,579 --> 00:09:40,380 Whenever it started out, people said, Oh, it's so complicated. 192 00:09:40,380 --> 00:09:41,280 I can't go near it. 193 00:09:41,579 --> 00:09:44,479 Whereas it's almost simplified over the years to the point 194 00:09:44,489 --> 00:09:47,319 that people are like, it's almost easier to run on Kubernetes. 195 00:09:47,319 --> 00:09:51,079 So it's technology just doing what technology does and rapidly 196 00:09:51,079 --> 00:09:54,634 evolving to meet the user needs, which Complicates and simplifies 197 00:09:54,664 --> 00:09:57,044 things in different ways depending on what the users want. 198 00:09:57,204 --> 00:09:59,734 Corey: There's something to be said for being able to 199 00:09:59,734 --> 00:10:02,324 interoperate with other technology stacks as they grow. 200 00:10:02,464 --> 00:10:05,574 My take on serverless is dead, is somewhat controversial, 201 00:10:05,574 --> 00:10:07,944 and I assure you I'm not trying to bring toxicity to this. 202 00:10:08,034 --> 00:10:10,014 But I am curious to get your take on it. 203 00:10:10,074 --> 00:10:14,164 Where I have been increasingly disheartened over the years as AWS 204 00:10:14,164 --> 00:10:17,300 has started referring to things as serverless that Don't align 205 00:10:17,300 --> 00:10:20,650 with my, or some other folks perspective on what serverless is. 206 00:10:20,859 --> 00:10:24,069 Because originally when it was launched, a fundamental aspect to it was that 207 00:10:24,069 --> 00:10:28,039 when you're not using it, it scales to zero, so you only pay for what you use. 208 00:10:28,490 --> 00:10:33,050 A growing number of services that are badged serverless, uh, Redshift, Aurora, 209 00:10:33,050 --> 00:10:36,550 and a few others, don't scale down to zero, they scale down to a minimum 210 00:10:36,550 --> 00:10:41,140 number of units that still cost tens of dollars per month per instance. 211 00:10:41,355 --> 00:10:45,235 And that's always irked me because it breaks a pattern I love with serverless. 212 00:10:45,295 --> 00:10:46,665 Take something like DynamoDB. 213 00:10:46,865 --> 00:10:50,305 Every feature branch for every developer can have its own infrastructure 214 00:10:50,305 --> 00:10:53,584 because there's no real cost associated with it beyond just storage. 215 00:10:53,754 --> 00:10:56,085 That's been, I guess, the thing that's been irking me. 216 00:10:56,175 --> 00:10:57,575 I'm curious to get your take on it. 217 00:10:57,654 --> 00:10:59,745 I'm sure there's nuance and aspects I'm missing. 218 00:10:59,890 --> 00:11:02,210 Matt: I do agree with you in the sense of like, that's what 219 00:11:02,210 --> 00:11:06,100 I love about Lambda and Dynamo and SQS and API Gateway, even 220 00:11:06,100 --> 00:11:08,750 though API Gateway, I've complained about it a lot because it's 221 00:11:08,750 --> 00:11:12,150 the most complicated way to just add a URL to a Lambda function. 222 00:11:12,560 --> 00:11:16,829 But the whole premise, I can stand it up on my personal account and 223 00:11:17,160 --> 00:11:20,010 The cost will be one cent, you know, like it's not going to be a lot. 224 00:11:20,060 --> 00:11:21,800 And then I delete it all and it's gone. 225 00:11:21,960 --> 00:11:25,500 Whereas if I tried to do anything with the traditional tech, you're going to 226 00:11:25,500 --> 00:11:27,769 need to add a credit card to that and you're going to need to worry about it. 227 00:11:27,970 --> 00:11:32,830 And yeah, the big premise of things scaling down to zero is, is huge. 228 00:11:32,910 --> 00:11:36,640 My, my thing is serverless was scales to zero, but also it was meant to 229 00:11:36,650 --> 00:11:40,380 be the undifferentiated heavy lifting gets put on the cloud provider. 230 00:11:40,540 --> 00:11:41,370 So I love it. 231 00:11:42,020 --> 00:11:44,470 Turned off, but also we had that before with things like 232 00:11:44,470 --> 00:11:47,630 Heroku and these various platforms that you could just put a 233 00:11:47,630 --> 00:11:50,619 container in and they would just auto scale up and down to zero. 234 00:11:50,780 --> 00:11:52,710 Corey: And terrible VPS providers before that. 235 00:11:52,730 --> 00:11:54,469 Oops, the service just turned itself off. 236 00:11:54,480 --> 00:11:55,370 We don't know why. 237 00:11:55,390 --> 00:11:56,090 Neither do they. 238 00:11:56,090 --> 00:11:57,870 Apparently we'll come back in six hours. 239 00:11:58,350 --> 00:11:59,089 Matt: Yeah, exactly. 240 00:11:59,090 --> 00:12:03,130 Like, so the scaling to zero is awesome for people to experiment 241 00:12:03,160 --> 00:12:06,430 with, but there's a certain point where if you're building for a 242 00:12:06,430 --> 00:12:09,805 company, the scale of liberty, the savings, are less than you'd 243 00:12:09,805 --> 00:12:12,265 think it would be on a production app by the time you add in all the 244 00:12:12,265 --> 00:12:15,235 configurations that we need in order to meet all of the compliance. 245 00:12:15,375 --> 00:12:19,584 Um, so, but where it still hits us is that, like I said, the 246 00:12:19,585 --> 00:12:22,024 undifferentiated heavy lifting is still on the developer. 247 00:12:22,024 --> 00:12:26,055 So now that they've added things like container images to Lambda, all 248 00:12:26,055 --> 00:12:28,635 of a sudden it has all the dependency issues that it would have had 249 00:12:28,635 --> 00:12:31,844 if I deployed it to a container platform, whereas Lambda was meant to 250 00:12:31,844 --> 00:12:34,765 handle all the things for me because out of the box, I was only going 251 00:12:34,765 --> 00:12:37,625 to send it the class file that it was going to have the logic in. 252 00:12:37,869 --> 00:12:39,640 And it was meant to be like 12 lines of code. 253 00:12:39,810 --> 00:12:42,969 So the, the underlying way that we develop with serverless has 254 00:12:42,969 --> 00:12:47,040 shifted, which has meant that the piece I loved is kind of niche now. 255 00:12:47,270 --> 00:12:51,749 And I think it's okay, but it definitely has made it harder for people to 256 00:12:51,749 --> 00:12:55,465 get started because Like you said, shoot a scale to zero, it should be cheap, 257 00:12:55,535 --> 00:12:58,704 and it should be minimum amount of lines of code to get people in the door. 258 00:12:58,925 --> 00:13:01,434 Corey: I think that people adopting serverless on 259 00:13:01,435 --> 00:13:04,095 a cost basis is a bit of a post hoc justification. 260 00:13:04,265 --> 00:13:06,574 People, in my experience, tend to adopt things because of 261 00:13:06,574 --> 00:13:08,785 the capability story, especially when it comes to cloud. 262 00:13:08,985 --> 00:13:12,174 Now, yes, pricing means some things are complete non starter. 263 00:13:12,174 --> 00:13:13,814 Oh, I took one look at the pricing page. 264 00:13:13,814 --> 00:13:15,935 We'll just close that browser tab and never go back 265 00:13:15,935 --> 00:13:17,905 there because I don't have that kind of scratch. 266 00:13:18,194 --> 00:13:22,305 But there are, there are other stories where It leads to a cost savings, 267 00:13:22,324 --> 00:13:26,514 but that's not the reason that people build processing queues with Lambda. 268 00:13:26,555 --> 00:13:29,874 It's because the capability story is there, the lack of maintenance 269 00:13:29,874 --> 00:13:32,964 overhead is significant, and you're effectively letting the 270 00:13:32,964 --> 00:13:36,214 cloud do the undifferentiated heavy lifting, and you can stop 271 00:13:36,214 --> 00:13:40,124 solving global problems locally in somewhat significant ways. 272 00:13:40,264 --> 00:13:43,134 That's something that I think is what led to a lot of the excitement. 273 00:13:43,469 --> 00:13:44,589 around serverless. 274 00:13:44,599 --> 00:13:47,270 The fact that it was less expensive was just a nice cherry on top. 275 00:13:47,420 --> 00:13:49,949 Matt: I would argue most developers didn't know the cost 276 00:13:49,949 --> 00:13:52,279 of what they were deploying before serverless came along. 277 00:13:52,550 --> 00:13:54,640 They just used the best developer experience. 278 00:13:54,760 --> 00:13:56,550 Corey: Well, now that we're using serverless, I would say that almost 279 00:13:56,560 --> 00:13:59,709 no one understands the cost of what they're deploying in an absolute 280 00:13:59,709 --> 00:14:02,359 sense, unless they've really done a great job of instrumentation, 281 00:14:02,369 --> 00:14:05,959 which I am as guilty as anyone else in not really having that. 282 00:14:06,245 --> 00:14:08,165 across the board as well as I would like. 283 00:14:08,454 --> 00:14:09,645 In theory, it's great. 284 00:14:09,645 --> 00:14:13,074 You can, you can figure out the cost per request or per thousand requests. 285 00:14:13,225 --> 00:14:17,395 In practice, I find that's one of those aspirational items on the to do list. 286 00:14:17,515 --> 00:14:18,045 Matt: For sure. 287 00:14:18,045 --> 00:14:21,954 It's the most difficult skill in AWS to be able to know the costs. 288 00:14:21,965 --> 00:14:27,064 So your job, I have so much respect for it because, uh, it's, it's an art form. 289 00:14:27,235 --> 00:14:29,314 Corey: Yeah, it is not what I ever expected 290 00:14:29,375 --> 00:14:31,225 to find myself doing, but there was a need. 291 00:14:31,225 --> 00:14:32,425 I figured, I'll fill this for a couple of 292 00:14:32,425 --> 00:14:34,235 years until the problem goes away and it. 293 00:14:34,574 --> 00:14:36,465 Somehow, only ever got bigger and bigger and bigger. 294 00:14:36,465 --> 00:14:39,125 There was no magic solution here waiting around for folk. 295 00:14:39,215 --> 00:14:40,485 Matt: Crazy, they were just waiting for you. 296 00:14:40,655 --> 00:14:41,135 Corey: Exactly. 297 00:14:41,265 --> 00:14:43,435 You also have something else coming out in the somewhat 298 00:14:43,444 --> 00:14:45,715 near future, if we're allowed to talk about it. 299 00:14:45,864 --> 00:14:48,265 Matt: Yes, we can, we can definitely talk about it here first. 300 00:14:48,385 --> 00:14:49,545 Corey: By all means, tell the story. 301 00:14:49,545 --> 00:14:51,354 I dare not tell your story for you. 302 00:14:51,444 --> 00:14:53,395 Matt: Yeah, so it's something that Christy Peralta 303 00:14:53,395 --> 00:14:55,314 and I have actually been working on together. 304 00:14:55,314 --> 00:14:57,525 So Christy is another hero. 305 00:14:57,859 --> 00:15:02,770 in the AWS community, and we've been working on a product called TeachMeAWS. 306 00:15:02,900 --> 00:15:06,119 This is born out of our frustrations with, it's 307 00:15:06,130 --> 00:15:09,380 so hard to do anything for the first time on AWS. 308 00:15:09,840 --> 00:15:13,180 And by that, I don't even mean, like I do mean, but I don't 309 00:15:13,199 --> 00:15:15,759 just mean the first person in the door whenever you're 310 00:15:15,760 --> 00:15:18,530 like, I want to learn AWS, I've never touched it before. 311 00:15:18,720 --> 00:15:21,630 I mean, I haven't gone back to EventBridge in six months. 312 00:15:21,900 --> 00:15:22,850 What does it do now? 313 00:15:23,020 --> 00:15:26,350 It is very hard to catch up the second that you stop, and that's 314 00:15:26,350 --> 00:15:29,920 why we are trying to launch a product that should make it really 315 00:15:29,920 --> 00:15:32,749 easy for you to be able to go in and understand exactly what 316 00:15:32,750 --> 00:15:36,359 capabilities are there, which ones realistically you shouldn't be 317 00:15:36,359 --> 00:15:39,549 using at this point in time unless there is a niche use case for it. 318 00:15:39,920 --> 00:15:43,460 As well as provide you with the code CDK pattern style that you 319 00:15:43,460 --> 00:15:46,370 can actually just get up and running with those features so that 320 00:15:46,460 --> 00:15:49,919 ideally you don't need to go anywhere else than go to TeachMeAWS 321 00:15:49,920 --> 00:15:53,320 and you can catch up with every piece of it and get going. 322 00:15:53,899 --> 00:15:55,770 Corey: Few things are better for your career and your 323 00:15:55,779 --> 00:15:59,260 company than achieving more expertise in the cloud. 324 00:15:59,410 --> 00:16:04,030 Security improves, compensation goes up, employee retention skyrockets. 325 00:16:04,280 --> 00:16:07,520 Panoptica, a cloud security platform from Cisco, 326 00:16:07,550 --> 00:16:11,030 has created an academy of free courses just for you. 327 00:16:11,449 --> 00:16:12,959 Head on over to academy. 328 00:16:13,310 --> 00:16:14,470 panoptica. 329 00:16:14,520 --> 00:16:16,230 app to get started. 330 00:16:16,630 --> 00:16:20,249 One thing I notice about most things that teach people how AWS works is 331 00:16:20,249 --> 00:16:25,430 they have an either explicit or implicit drive towards the certifications. 332 00:16:25,870 --> 00:16:29,060 As in, okay, effectively they wind up in 333 00:16:29,060 --> 00:16:31,130 the fullness of time teaching to the test. 334 00:16:31,270 --> 00:16:34,789 What you're describing does not sound like it's headed in that direction. 335 00:16:34,910 --> 00:16:37,780 Matt: No, and full disclosure in the interest of the 336 00:16:37,780 --> 00:16:40,409 podcast, I'm not even AWS certified at this point. 337 00:16:40,560 --> 00:16:41,650 Corey: At this moment, neither am I. 338 00:16:42,919 --> 00:16:47,270 Matt: Because as far as I'm concerned, certificates are great, but in terms 339 00:16:47,270 --> 00:16:51,180 of whenever you're on a dev team and someone just says, okay, we need to build 340 00:16:51,180 --> 00:16:54,400 this feature, the certificate doesn't necessarily help you in that moment. 341 00:16:54,430 --> 00:16:58,075 Whereas If you have a tool that can turn around and say, 342 00:16:58,155 --> 00:17:01,345 okay, you're trying to build some kind of event driven flow. 343 00:17:01,405 --> 00:17:02,185 Let's talk about it. 344 00:17:02,185 --> 00:17:03,155 These are your options. 345 00:17:03,444 --> 00:17:06,545 All of a sudden you've now gone into direct problem solving and 346 00:17:06,545 --> 00:17:10,284 meeting the needs of the user instead of, well, the certificate 347 00:17:10,285 --> 00:17:13,694 wants me to know that SQS has this feature and blah, blah, blah. 348 00:17:13,815 --> 00:17:15,974 You know, it's one is very textbook. 349 00:17:15,974 --> 00:17:17,885 I need to know this knowledge and the other one is I have a 350 00:17:17,885 --> 00:17:21,085 job to do and I need to get in and quickly solve this thing. 351 00:17:21,325 --> 00:17:25,800 Corey: There's a, Definite strong sense of how to frame this. 352 00:17:26,110 --> 00:17:29,640 Uh, at least for me, that, I guess, aversion towards certifications. 353 00:17:29,680 --> 00:17:32,860 I've seen it in other people and I've noticed it in myself, and I only recently 354 00:17:32,860 --> 00:17:35,690 picked up the vocabulary to explain what it is that rankles me about it. 355 00:17:35,900 --> 00:17:40,705 And it's that they tend to Bias for process rather than results. 356 00:17:40,995 --> 00:17:44,245 And in some cases, yes, that's terrific, and for some folks, that's 357 00:17:44,274 --> 00:17:46,715 awesome, but that's always been nails on a chalkboard for me. 358 00:17:46,715 --> 00:17:49,354 It's why I don't do well in academia, it's why I don't do well in 359 00:17:49,354 --> 00:17:51,864 large companies, it's why the military is certainly not for me. 360 00:17:52,274 --> 00:17:57,195 And certifications have always felt like They teach certifications 361 00:17:57,195 --> 00:18:00,495 from the vendor perspective and the world a vendor imagines. 362 00:18:00,885 --> 00:18:03,655 And trivia is not really the best way I've found 363 00:18:03,665 --> 00:18:06,275 to assess someone's ability to get things done. 364 00:18:06,415 --> 00:18:08,725 So it's always been strange to me, but I don't want to be too 365 00:18:08,725 --> 00:18:11,834 negative about them because some people find that resonates with them. 366 00:18:11,894 --> 00:18:15,995 And especially early career, it acts as a differentiator and unlocks value. 367 00:18:16,175 --> 00:18:18,825 I'm not dunking on people who go for certifications. 368 00:18:18,845 --> 00:18:19,715 Truly, I'm not. 369 00:18:20,105 --> 00:18:20,855 But they're not for me. 370 00:18:20,965 --> 00:18:23,465 Matt: It's interesting because like you said, people work in different 371 00:18:23,465 --> 00:18:28,725 ways and I find that my particular skill set is I can amass a large amount 372 00:18:28,725 --> 00:18:32,184 of information really quickly to solve a problem and then it's gone. 373 00:18:32,395 --> 00:18:36,664 So the idea of keeping all the certificates up to date is a 374 00:18:36,665 --> 00:18:39,375 nightmare for me because that would just be constantly me trying 375 00:18:39,375 --> 00:18:42,615 to absorb all this information, do the exam and then forget it all. 376 00:18:42,705 --> 00:18:44,725 But it does make me really good at solving 377 00:18:44,725 --> 00:18:46,995 problems and architecting and doing my day job. 378 00:18:47,165 --> 00:18:48,995 But for other people who have that. 379 00:18:49,310 --> 00:18:52,260 More process driven flow, like you say, the certificates 380 00:18:52,260 --> 00:18:54,060 are brilliant for keeping that information up to date. 381 00:18:54,060 --> 00:18:55,919 It's just some people work in different ways. 382 00:18:56,110 --> 00:19:00,040 Corey: I've found that as I look at the way that I learn things, I, 383 00:19:00,649 --> 00:19:04,120 the curriculum, a standard classroom instruction do not work for me. 384 00:19:04,449 --> 00:19:06,419 What does is you have a problem to solve, 385 00:19:06,790 --> 00:19:10,489 go solve it, have fun, and that's awesome. 386 00:19:10,760 --> 00:19:14,679 if there's a problem that I can, that I can throw myself out in the right way. 387 00:19:14,800 --> 00:19:18,530 Whereas with, with a lot of the way that these things work, 388 00:19:18,530 --> 00:19:20,350 it's like, Oh, here's how to learn how to do this thing. 389 00:19:20,350 --> 00:19:21,980 And I won't remember that eight months from now 390 00:19:21,980 --> 00:19:23,730 when I need to actually do that thing for real. 391 00:19:23,730 --> 00:19:25,159 I'm going back to look it up. 392 00:19:25,319 --> 00:19:29,449 How do you, how are you approaching this from the teach me AWS side? 393 00:19:29,470 --> 00:19:30,370 Is it videos? 394 00:19:30,389 --> 00:19:31,760 Is it blog posts? 395 00:19:31,780 --> 00:19:32,830 Is it something else? 396 00:19:32,950 --> 00:19:33,190 Matt: Yeah. 397 00:19:33,190 --> 00:19:36,710 So it's, it's a little bit different in the sense of, um, 398 00:19:36,720 --> 00:19:39,244 so we want to have a couple of different angles to it. 399 00:19:39,514 --> 00:19:42,844 The first one we almost described as, I think this translates 400 00:19:42,844 --> 00:19:47,314 to America and no one's a big UK thing, but whenever you buy a 401 00:19:47,314 --> 00:19:50,185 car, you used to buy the Haynes manual, which you opened it up 402 00:19:50,185 --> 00:19:53,044 and it told you everything about the gearbox, the Haynes manual. 403 00:19:53,185 --> 00:19:54,344 Corey: Haynes manual or Chilton guide, 404 00:19:54,344 --> 00:19:56,114 depends on what religion you have, but yeah. 405 00:19:56,124 --> 00:19:56,464 Matt: Yeah. 406 00:19:56,604 --> 00:20:00,205 So that's, we need that for every piece of AWS that you can go 407 00:20:00,205 --> 00:20:03,254 in and you can just like look up EventBridge and be like, Oh. 408 00:20:03,600 --> 00:20:07,080 Okay, I see this particular flag I can set or this particular property. 409 00:20:07,360 --> 00:20:09,889 I see that, for instance, there's a difference between the EventBridge 410 00:20:09,899 --> 00:20:13,529 scheduler and scheduling an event on EventBridge, not the same thing. 411 00:20:14,010 --> 00:20:18,239 Um, so like there's that kind of people who just want to jump into an answer. 412 00:20:18,590 --> 00:20:20,929 There's the videos that you're talking about where somebody 413 00:20:20,929 --> 00:20:23,520 goes through and breaks it down in a more visual form. 414 00:20:23,790 --> 00:20:27,629 But then also there needs to be exercises almost with guardrails 415 00:20:27,629 --> 00:20:31,199 around it that say, Okay, we're going to deploy something for real 416 00:20:31,360 --> 00:20:34,739 and we're going to make sure you do it in a way that it is for real. 417 00:20:34,739 --> 00:20:37,370 It's not a case of, let's click a few buttons, you've got 418 00:20:37,370 --> 00:20:39,699 something deployed, but if you put this into production, 419 00:20:39,959 --> 00:20:42,629 let's be honest, it's going to be a tier one breach tomorrow. 420 00:20:42,759 --> 00:20:47,179 So it's, it's sort of combining jumping quickly, learn things with maybe a bit 421 00:20:47,179 --> 00:20:51,989 of, uh, you could follow the, the video feed channels to be like, okay, we just 422 00:20:51,989 --> 00:20:56,169 like the vibe with, I want to do practical exercises and learn on these things. 423 00:20:56,329 --> 00:20:58,049 And it should all be done in a way that it's. 424 00:20:58,275 --> 00:21:03,205 Uh, Tool Agnostic, because I always felt that CDK Patterns Downfall was that CDK 425 00:21:03,205 --> 00:21:06,665 was in the name, so it made it really hard to pivot to help other communities. 426 00:21:06,845 --> 00:21:09,985 So therefore this will support, you know, like CloudFormation if 427 00:21:09,985 --> 00:21:14,644 you want to do it, obviously CDK, SAM, whatever else makes sense in 428 00:21:14,644 --> 00:21:17,715 different programming languages to try and make it one place that you 429 00:21:17,715 --> 00:21:21,649 can really come back and Build that habit of going through different 430 00:21:21,649 --> 00:21:24,790 exercises, different days, or dip in and out to solve a problem. 431 00:21:24,950 --> 00:21:27,220 Corey: Not being prescriptive around tooling is a big part of it. 432 00:21:27,349 --> 00:21:31,649 I always liked uh, Ian McKay's Console Recorder 2 extension. 433 00:21:32,015 --> 00:21:34,595 Because what that did was it watched whatever API calls you 434 00:21:34,595 --> 00:21:37,865 made in the console and then spit out uh, CloudFormation if 435 00:21:37,865 --> 00:21:41,245 you wanted it, or Terraform, or Troposphere from back in the 436 00:21:41,245 --> 00:21:45,365 day, or here's how to do it with cURL requests, or the AWS CLI. 437 00:21:45,365 --> 00:21:46,665 It's amazing stuff. 438 00:21:46,745 --> 00:21:49,275 It's not prescriptive about how to do this in 439 00:21:49,285 --> 00:21:52,195 any particular language or tooling framework. 440 00:21:52,375 --> 00:21:54,445 That, I think meeting people where they are, 441 00:21:54,515 --> 00:21:57,225 people are in a lot of places, Toward this. 442 00:21:57,405 --> 00:22:00,135 I like your approach better than most that I see 443 00:22:00,135 --> 00:22:01,725 this sounds like something I would actually use. 444 00:22:02,695 --> 00:22:05,395 Matt: The other thing we want to do is So the funny thing is, I am a 445 00:22:05,395 --> 00:22:09,315 TypeScript developer at heart, and Christie's a Python developer at heart. 446 00:22:09,525 --> 00:22:12,725 So therefore, we're going to try and bake the best practices of the languages. 447 00:22:12,725 --> 00:22:13,795 We know best into it. 448 00:22:13,955 --> 00:22:16,495 And I mean, We've got Come from an enterprise, 449 00:22:16,515 --> 00:22:19,185 so Java, I have a very heavy Java knowledge set. 450 00:22:19,475 --> 00:22:21,665 So we'll obviously try and support those developers 451 00:22:21,665 --> 00:22:23,915 who've been long neglected in this space. 452 00:22:24,075 --> 00:22:25,455 Corey: Yeah, my first outing with the CDK was 453 00:22:25,455 --> 00:22:27,565 with Python when it was not very well baked. 454 00:22:27,575 --> 00:22:30,075 So I picked up enough TypeScript to learn how to stumble 455 00:22:30,075 --> 00:22:32,285 through that, and I finally got it, and that was great. 456 00:22:32,425 --> 00:22:35,420 But yeah, Learning a new language to understand 457 00:22:35,560 --> 00:22:37,480 some sort of tooling has always been strange for me. 458 00:22:37,490 --> 00:22:39,630 That's my challenge, historically, that I've always 459 00:22:39,630 --> 00:22:42,800 run into whenever I have to deal with the nonsense of a 460 00:22:42,800 --> 00:22:45,510 different tooling that requires its own specific language. 461 00:22:45,540 --> 00:22:48,380 Uh, I want to cache to Kubernetes demanding YAML 462 00:22:48,380 --> 00:22:49,970 knowledge, but that's neither here nor there. 463 00:22:49,970 --> 00:22:52,570 But, but Terraforms, uh, HashiCorp's, uh, custom 464 00:22:52,570 --> 00:22:55,510 DSL, Chef had the same problem once upon a time. 465 00:22:55,510 --> 00:22:58,740 It's, I like being able to not have to pick up an 466 00:22:58,740 --> 00:23:02,060 entire new syntax and understanding of the universe. 467 00:23:02,270 --> 00:23:02,780 to use a tool. 468 00:23:02,890 --> 00:23:06,210 Matt: The one gap that I still see out there that um, there's 469 00:23:06,460 --> 00:23:09,990 big opportunities for is the day two experience of all this stuff 470 00:23:10,020 --> 00:23:13,260 because day one it's awesome whenever you can use your same tools. 471 00:23:13,550 --> 00:23:18,430 But I remember, I don't know, 18 months ago, I talked to a lad from 472 00:23:18,590 --> 00:23:23,690 Wing, formerly AWS, who built the CDK, and uh, he was telling me 473 00:23:23,700 --> 00:23:27,200 that from his perspective, when you said the syntax, he reminded me. 474 00:23:27,420 --> 00:23:30,950 The reason why he created a new programming language in wing is because 475 00:23:30,950 --> 00:23:34,460 he wanted to build a new experience on top of the cloud and have this 476 00:23:34,460 --> 00:23:37,550 almost, he called it, he's probably changed his term since then, I 477 00:23:37,550 --> 00:23:40,330 should really check what the new marketing is, but this, uh, like 478 00:23:40,330 --> 00:23:44,120 fighter jet cockpit for, um, developers where they don't even need 479 00:23:44,140 --> 00:23:46,670 to leave it, you know, they understand everything that's going on. 480 00:23:46,890 --> 00:23:51,480 And I do still think there's a real gap today in that even if I can 481 00:23:51,610 --> 00:23:55,850 hold your hand to get you to deploy a solution on AWS, because the whole 482 00:23:55,850 --> 00:24:00,275 platform is 5, 000 individual pieces that you can stitch together yourself. 483 00:24:00,415 --> 00:24:04,045 It is very hard for people on day two to understand if they weren't there. 484 00:24:04,315 --> 00:24:05,665 Number one, what you deployed. 485 00:24:05,815 --> 00:24:07,905 Number two, how well architected it is. 486 00:24:07,905 --> 00:24:10,225 And number three, you know, are there any kind 487 00:24:10,225 --> 00:24:12,675 of logs, dashboards, metrics, what's going on? 488 00:24:12,675 --> 00:24:15,435 How do I even diagnose where the errors are in this thing? 489 00:24:15,605 --> 00:24:17,335 And that's day one. 490 00:24:17,335 --> 00:24:20,465 We want to solve the idea of, okay, let's use 491 00:24:20,465 --> 00:24:22,725 a piece of AWS, but the longer term vision. 492 00:24:23,055 --> 00:24:27,715 I do think that the day two experience is where people have picked up on the 493 00:24:27,715 --> 00:24:31,655 patterns and then stopped and been like, we got people to production day one. 494 00:24:31,725 --> 00:24:32,815 That's good enough for us. 495 00:24:32,815 --> 00:24:34,325 And that's where we need to solve next. 496 00:24:34,495 --> 00:24:37,905 Corey: I've encountered myself the pattern where I'll set something up 497 00:24:37,915 --> 00:24:41,345 with serverless or the serverless framework historically or the CDK. 498 00:24:42,210 --> 00:24:44,560 And then it just sort of works as its own little microservice. 499 00:24:44,570 --> 00:24:47,140 I don't have to touch that thing again for years at a time. 500 00:24:47,350 --> 00:24:48,660 And then I go back to do that. 501 00:24:48,660 --> 00:24:51,470 It turns into a half day project every time I do because, 502 00:24:51,500 --> 00:24:54,450 oh, there's several major language versions behind now and I 503 00:24:54,460 --> 00:24:57,260 have to wind up doing a bunch of updates to the code base and 504 00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:00,140 dependency hell where things start breaking left and right. 505 00:25:00,690 --> 00:25:04,000 It feels like it's almost like even to change a single string in 506 00:25:04,000 --> 00:25:06,750 this thing, I have to rebuild a tool chain in order to get there. 507 00:25:06,880 --> 00:25:08,270 That's always been challenging. 508 00:25:08,360 --> 00:25:10,580 I'm starting to think that the right answer here is. 509 00:25:10,865 --> 00:25:14,215 to have a CICD build automatically on a 510 00:25:14,225 --> 00:25:16,525 scheduled basis, weekly or monthly or something. 511 00:25:16,715 --> 00:25:19,645 And then when it breaks, you go in and you fix it iteratively, rather 512 00:25:19,645 --> 00:25:22,545 than having to go and spend half a day on it every time it breaks. 513 00:25:22,675 --> 00:25:24,525 But then again, you still want, then you end up spending a lot of 514 00:25:24,525 --> 00:25:27,565 time throughout the year on things that don't need to be touched. 515 00:25:27,565 --> 00:25:29,195 And I can see both sides of it. 516 00:25:29,325 --> 00:25:30,195 It's still frustrating. 517 00:25:30,345 --> 00:25:33,675 Matt: It's hard because, um, I've, I've talked about in the past where 518 00:25:33,675 --> 00:25:37,205 I would love a way almost that you can tag out of using a tool like CDK. 519 00:25:37,605 --> 00:25:41,085 Because I know you can't straight export to CloudFormation, but 520 00:25:41,185 --> 00:25:44,365 it's, whenever I say tag out, I want a way to tag back in again. 521 00:25:44,525 --> 00:25:47,325 Because I see these tools as a developer accelerator, when 522 00:25:47,325 --> 00:25:50,525 they're in the mindset to do some kind of large change. 523 00:25:50,625 --> 00:25:53,965 Like you just said, when the thing is stable and you're not making many changes, 524 00:25:54,085 --> 00:25:57,855 it's more effort than it's worth to keep all the dependencies up to date. 525 00:25:57,955 --> 00:26:01,615 And you can, like you just said, like, Automate it where you do your regular 526 00:26:01,615 --> 00:26:05,375 builds and things, but it is a constant reminder in the back of your head. 527 00:26:05,555 --> 00:26:09,265 So if you could tag out to something else, serverless, that you don't 528 00:26:09,265 --> 00:26:12,115 need to worry about the burden of it, and then whenever you want 529 00:26:12,115 --> 00:26:14,855 to come back to do your development work, all of a sudden you can 530 00:26:14,855 --> 00:26:17,959 spin it up again in Python or TypeScript or whatever, do your code. 531 00:26:18,210 --> 00:26:19,610 Check it back in again and then not worry 532 00:26:19,610 --> 00:26:21,410 about maintaining it until the next time. 533 00:26:21,580 --> 00:26:23,510 I think that's what everybody wants, it's just no one's 534 00:26:23,540 --> 00:26:26,070 worked out how to do it from a technical perspective yet. 535 00:26:26,230 --> 00:26:28,780 Corey: Oh yeah, especially since I found that a great way to, to 536 00:26:28,810 --> 00:26:31,950 relax some of the lambda constraints was to run docker containers. 537 00:26:32,080 --> 00:26:35,100 Where you can specify exact libraries, versions of it and the rest. 538 00:26:35,390 --> 00:26:35,800 Awesome! 539 00:26:35,995 --> 00:26:37,895 But then it's just this opaque thing. 540 00:26:37,905 --> 00:26:41,445 You can't really edit the one line string you need to change in there. 541 00:26:41,445 --> 00:26:44,445 And, oh great, now we're trying to remember how this whole codebase works. 542 00:26:44,445 --> 00:26:46,785 Because it turns out I'm bad at documenting even for myself. 543 00:26:47,455 --> 00:26:49,235 Matt: Sometimes you think the whole thing was working 544 00:26:49,235 --> 00:26:52,885 and then, like today, I find out that, uh, my SQS queue 545 00:26:52,895 --> 00:26:54,975 was sending a bunch of things to the dead letter queue. 546 00:26:55,095 --> 00:26:59,155 Because of one configuration in SQS that you have to 547 00:26:59,155 --> 00:27:01,275 tell it that you've throttled the lambda function down. 548 00:27:01,275 --> 00:27:04,925 And if you don't set that flag, all your Events just go straight to 549 00:27:04,925 --> 00:27:07,945 the dead letter queue and you, you know, like it's stuff like that, 550 00:27:07,985 --> 00:27:10,815 that if you make a tweak, you've come back six months later and you 551 00:27:10,815 --> 00:27:14,045 forget that you'd even set up a dead letter queue on that to check it. 552 00:27:14,165 --> 00:27:17,595 So it's, it's definitely like a day two is a big deal 553 00:27:17,595 --> 00:27:19,725 and I'm surprised more people aren't focused on it. 554 00:27:19,905 --> 00:27:21,515 Corey: I am as well, to be perfectly honest with you. 555 00:27:21,625 --> 00:27:25,925 There's a, there's a strong sense that in what I'm seeing that 556 00:27:26,220 --> 00:27:28,160 People are just trying to get the thing out the door today to 557 00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:30,870 make it work and not operationalizing it, not thinking about, 558 00:27:31,170 --> 00:27:33,550 Okay, it's great now that it works, but when it suddenly stops 559 00:27:33,550 --> 00:27:37,280 working for a variety of reasons, what is that going to look like? 560 00:27:37,280 --> 00:27:41,060 It's, it's the idea, it's the difference between a mad science experiment, or 561 00:27:41,100 --> 00:27:45,000 as I think of it, a shitposting app that I build for funsies, and something 562 00:27:45,000 --> 00:27:47,960 that actually has to bear production workloads at serious companies. 563 00:27:48,210 --> 00:27:52,560 And that, I think, is, it's a bit of a strange, I guess, metamorphosis, 564 00:27:52,560 --> 00:27:55,290 because me building something ludicrous and putting it on the internet 565 00:27:55,290 --> 00:27:58,850 is amusing for everyone, no one really cares, and now here's how I'm 566 00:27:58,850 --> 00:28:01,550 going to make this something that multiple people can collaborate on, 567 00:28:01,550 --> 00:28:04,950 and here's how we're going to do GitFlow with this, and, and go down 568 00:28:04,950 --> 00:28:08,020 that process, because no one cares, that is, that is not interesting to 569 00:28:08,020 --> 00:28:11,400 most people, and even the constraints are artificial when I impose it 570 00:28:11,400 --> 00:28:15,070 on something like that, so it's, it's not a, even a realistic example. 571 00:28:15,285 --> 00:28:17,115 of what it is that I'd be talking about. 572 00:28:17,275 --> 00:28:21,185 Matt: I know we haven't mentioned the buzzword of GNAI, but even the, the 573 00:28:21,185 --> 00:28:24,515 tools that are out there that help you generate the code as you go, I mean, 574 00:28:24,515 --> 00:28:28,215 they're only making all of this worse from that perspective of it helps you 575 00:28:28,215 --> 00:28:31,575 get something working really quickly, but I would not put that in production 576 00:28:31,575 --> 00:28:34,345 without somebody who knows what they're doing, taking a look at it first. 577 00:28:34,495 --> 00:28:37,835 And, you know, like, so day one's getting a bit sketchier. 578 00:28:38,175 --> 00:28:40,025 at the same time as day two isn't solved. 579 00:28:40,235 --> 00:28:42,405 Corey: Peer review is wildly important. 580 00:28:42,585 --> 00:28:45,515 Just, it's not, doesn't matter how good you are, it's having 581 00:28:45,515 --> 00:28:48,515 someone who isn't you reviewing some of this stuff before it 582 00:28:48,515 --> 00:28:51,445 sees the light of day is massively helpful just because we're 583 00:28:51,445 --> 00:28:54,015 all too close to the problems we are currently solving ourselves. 584 00:28:54,145 --> 00:28:56,295 Matt: It's, it's incredible with a lot of this stuff 585 00:28:56,305 --> 00:28:58,905 that whenever, whenever I go to, you know, build 586 00:28:58,905 --> 00:29:02,215 something, the typing is the shortest part of the process. 587 00:29:02,365 --> 00:29:04,905 The longest part of the process is sitting down. 588 00:29:05,215 --> 00:29:09,235 Understanding what the root cause of the problem is, and then, you know, 589 00:29:09,235 --> 00:29:12,345 like, working out what the well architected thing is to do before you type. 590 00:29:12,505 --> 00:29:15,785 And a lot of that, I was thinking about, that has changed massively 591 00:29:15,785 --> 00:29:19,085 since I started my career to now, because, I mean, whenever, 592 00:29:19,115 --> 00:29:22,305 before I even worked for my current employer back, back, back in 593 00:29:22,305 --> 00:29:25,205 the day, I worked for people who didn't even use version control. 594 00:29:25,235 --> 00:29:29,130 You just, uploaded the files to the file server and kept going. 595 00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:33,210 And from there to where we are today, you used to do code reviews in front 596 00:29:33,220 --> 00:29:37,760 of 20, 30 people in a room where you'd call everybody in, you'd go line 597 00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:42,520 by line through, you know, enterprise Java and people would be like, Oh, I 598 00:29:42,530 --> 00:29:46,740 don't think you should use string builder there or very specific concerns. 599 00:29:46,890 --> 00:29:48,740 And then you've come to where we are today with 600 00:29:48,810 --> 00:29:51,370 pull requests and automated CICD pipelines. 601 00:29:51,540 --> 00:29:55,835 And I just think as much as I do believe in trunk based development. 602 00:29:55,945 --> 00:29:58,125 Whenever you're trying to learn and get from the team 603 00:29:58,125 --> 00:30:01,065 around you, pull requests are very underutilized for 604 00:30:01,115 --> 00:30:03,465 knowledge exchanges, given how averse we are to talking. 605 00:30:03,865 --> 00:30:07,695 Corey: That seems to be a sincere problem across the board, and 606 00:30:07,695 --> 00:30:10,625 also something you seem to be particularly passionate about. 607 00:30:10,715 --> 00:30:14,375 Like, I am curious, between TeachMeAWS, your variety of 608 00:30:14,375 --> 00:30:18,595 different roles in the sense of what you do in the community, 609 00:30:18,595 --> 00:30:21,160 what What's the common thread that ties it all together? 610 00:30:21,310 --> 00:30:25,600 I find there's usually something in there that is, that is hiding out 611 00:30:25,770 --> 00:30:29,500 as far as like the actual narrative thread that ties things together. 612 00:30:29,620 --> 00:30:31,800 Is there one for you or are you just sort of all across the board? 613 00:30:31,910 --> 00:30:35,500 Matt: Yeah, I mean, the, the narrative thread for me was, believe it 614 00:30:35,500 --> 00:30:38,930 or not, I've been in multiple roles in the industry at this point. 615 00:30:38,950 --> 00:30:42,010 I mean, I've literally done nearly every role 616 00:30:42,010 --> 00:30:46,489 there is in terms of, uh, I've done UI, UX, QA. 617 00:30:46,710 --> 00:30:51,360 UAT, development, architecture, product, like, I'm 618 00:30:51,370 --> 00:30:54,500 forgetting 50 60 roles of built machine learning models. 619 00:30:54,650 --> 00:30:55,800 I've, I've done a lot. 620 00:30:55,950 --> 00:30:59,880 And the common thread I saw across it all was, doesn't matter 621 00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:04,840 how much work I personally put in, because no matter how much I 622 00:31:04,870 --> 00:31:06,960 output, it's always going to be less than what the team can do. 623 00:31:07,610 --> 00:31:11,210 And even if, by some sheer miracle, I could personally 624 00:31:11,210 --> 00:31:14,160 deliver more than a team of six, that, that team won't be 625 00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:16,850 able to maintain it or add a single feature to it tomorrow. 626 00:31:17,050 --> 00:31:21,230 So, if you start focusing on the people around you, and then the 627 00:31:21,230 --> 00:31:24,680 people around them, and the people around them, and trying to remove 628 00:31:24,710 --> 00:31:28,890 barriers, lift people up, educate, educate, and train, almost. 629 00:31:29,085 --> 00:31:31,745 Remove those stigmas around certain technologies and certain, 630 00:31:31,795 --> 00:31:34,775 because people, for whatever reason, we all get in our own groove 631 00:31:34,815 --> 00:31:37,215 and we don't want to look outside of what we're used to looking at. 632 00:31:37,365 --> 00:31:39,455 If you can get people to even 1. 633 00:31:39,495 --> 00:31:43,075 01, what they were before you started, and you scale that to 634 00:31:43,105 --> 00:31:46,645 100 people, it's probably more than you at your maximum output. 635 00:31:46,805 --> 00:31:50,350 And I've, I've seen that even from I mean, a team perspective, 636 00:31:50,350 --> 00:31:53,980 a company perspective, but a country perspective in that I would 637 00:31:53,980 --> 00:31:57,750 just, like I said, I mean, I don't talk about it very much, but as 638 00:31:57,830 --> 00:32:01,470 someone who does come from Belfast that had a lot of problems in the 639 00:32:01,470 --> 00:32:05,300 past, a very divisive community, for me, it's really awesome to see 640 00:32:05,300 --> 00:32:08,300 people working together, not looking backwards, looking forwards. 641 00:32:08,640 --> 00:32:12,350 And actually setting the vision of we can do better, we 642 00:32:12,350 --> 00:32:14,770 can push forward, and we can build on each other's stuff. 643 00:32:14,940 --> 00:32:16,920 Corey: I think that that's one of those very valuable 644 00:32:17,080 --> 00:32:20,210 things that, like, we keep forgetting the human too easily. 645 00:32:20,210 --> 00:32:23,970 Even, it's one of those areas where I find, as much as I, 646 00:32:24,050 --> 00:32:26,980 as I care about this stuff and want to, I still find myself 647 00:32:27,170 --> 00:32:29,910 taking shortcuts mentally and forgetting that there are people 648 00:32:29,910 --> 00:32:32,170 behind a lot of the things that I'm talking about sometimes. 649 00:32:32,350 --> 00:32:34,050 I think that, you know, That's one of the reasons I 650 00:32:34,050 --> 00:32:35,900 love community, is it sort of forces you to do that. 651 00:32:35,910 --> 00:32:36,870 It's the reason I love conferences. 652 00:32:36,870 --> 00:32:39,640 It forces you to talk to a human being on the other side of the aisle. 653 00:32:39,760 --> 00:32:43,040 It's a valuable thing, and I think we need a lot more of that than we get. 654 00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:45,030 I just wish it weren't so annoying to put on physical 655 00:32:45,030 --> 00:32:46,860 conferences, otherwise I think we'd see more of them. 656 00:32:46,940 --> 00:32:50,780 Matt: Yeah, but the one amazing thing about it is seeing the people 657 00:32:50,780 --> 00:32:53,780 who have spoken up, or in some way been involved in something like 658 00:32:53,780 --> 00:32:57,210 CDK Day, And where they were when I met them and where they are now. 659 00:32:57,210 --> 00:33:00,390 I mean, half of them are heroes, community 660 00:33:00,390 --> 00:33:02,440 builders doing amazing things around the world. 661 00:33:02,620 --> 00:33:04,820 And I'm like, I knew you a couple of years ago. 662 00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:07,320 And so you do get like the way you're doing this podcast. 663 00:33:07,630 --> 00:33:10,710 It must be amazing to get to see people's stories evolve over time. 664 00:33:10,850 --> 00:33:14,370 And I do think that makes up for the annoyance of running the thing eventually. 665 00:33:14,645 --> 00:33:15,295 Corey: Oh, absolutely. 666 00:33:15,735 --> 00:33:16,225 There are counterexamples. 667 00:33:16,225 --> 00:33:18,115 I gave a talk at community day early on. 668 00:33:18,115 --> 00:33:21,605 I think I gave that one dressed in a full cultist's robe because I was, I called 669 00:33:21,605 --> 00:33:25,015 the CDK a ridiculous cult once and then I understood it and used it a lot. 670 00:33:25,025 --> 00:33:26,375 Now I'm a member of the cult. 671 00:33:26,395 --> 00:33:29,505 Please join my cult with me and I thought that was a great approach. 672 00:33:29,565 --> 00:33:33,055 Hard to pull that off on a conference stage, easier in a video, but 673 00:33:33,055 --> 00:33:37,330 it's a But that's an example of being able to tell a story in an 674 00:33:37,330 --> 00:33:40,460 engaging way that's fun, taking advantage of the medium that it's in. 675 00:33:40,650 --> 00:33:41,900 I love the experience. 676 00:33:41,920 --> 00:33:44,500 It's a lot easier for me to give a talk on a 677 00:33:44,500 --> 00:33:47,260 camera than it is for me to hop a plane to Belfast. 678 00:33:47,410 --> 00:33:48,050 Matt: Yeah, for sure. 679 00:33:48,060 --> 00:33:49,940 And I remember whenever that talk came in, 680 00:33:50,150 --> 00:33:52,220 everyone was like, oh no, can we play this? 681 00:33:52,230 --> 00:33:53,870 And I was like, listen, I trust Corey. 682 00:33:53,870 --> 00:33:54,610 This will be funny. 683 00:33:54,660 --> 00:33:55,550 This is what it's all about. 684 00:33:55,890 --> 00:33:57,120 And it was worth it. 685 00:33:57,120 --> 00:33:57,860 It was so good. 686 00:33:58,035 --> 00:33:59,465 Corey: Oh, I have a standing policy, I think people 687 00:33:59,465 --> 00:34:01,695 don't understand necessarily, that I don't make people 688 00:34:01,695 --> 00:34:04,705 regret giving me a platform or inviting me to things. 689 00:34:04,875 --> 00:34:07,215 Like, yes, I will go and savage corporate keynotes that you're 690 00:34:07,215 --> 00:34:09,685 broadcast to the entire internet, but if you invite me to speak 691 00:34:09,685 --> 00:34:13,255 at your conference, I will not make you regret that by crapping 692 00:34:13,275 --> 00:34:15,735 all over the conference or your major sponsors or all the rest. 693 00:34:15,735 --> 00:34:18,275 It's, like, I'm not difficult to work with, and I 694 00:34:18,285 --> 00:34:21,035 sometimes get the sense that people are surprised by that. 695 00:34:21,165 --> 00:34:21,675 It worked out. 696 00:34:21,920 --> 00:34:22,550 Matt: Yeah, it worked out. 697 00:34:22,580 --> 00:34:23,240 I trusted you. 698 00:34:23,280 --> 00:34:23,970 I had faith. 699 00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:24,700 Corey: Well, thank you. 700 00:34:24,890 --> 00:34:26,890 If people want to learn more about all the things you're up to, 701 00:34:26,890 --> 00:34:29,570 where's the best place for them to go, or in this case, places? 702 00:34:29,710 --> 00:34:32,220 Matt: If you want to know what I'm up to, you can follow me still 703 00:34:32,220 --> 00:34:35,960 on Twitter, or as people are calling it X these days, NIDEVELOPER. 704 00:34:36,070 --> 00:34:38,780 So NIDEVELOPER is my Twitter handle. 705 00:34:38,870 --> 00:34:41,450 If you want to know about the user group, there's 706 00:34:41,510 --> 00:34:44,980 also BelfastUG is the Twitter handle on there. 707 00:34:45,070 --> 00:34:49,585 For the community day that we're running, It is awsbelfast. 708 00:34:49,585 --> 00:34:49,684 co. 709 00:34:49,685 --> 00:34:50,595 uk. 710 00:34:50,735 --> 00:34:51,635 That one's simple. 711 00:34:51,885 --> 00:34:58,195 Um, and for obviously the most important one for TeachMeAWS, it is teachmeaws. 712 00:34:58,225 --> 00:34:58,535 com. 713 00:34:58,845 --> 00:34:59,505 That one's easy. 714 00:34:59,665 --> 00:35:02,265 Corey: Links to all of that will be in the show notes, though with that many, 715 00:35:02,265 --> 00:35:05,595 you have to click to expand the show notes in most of the podcast players. 716 00:35:05,725 --> 00:35:09,055 Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me about this. 717 00:35:09,055 --> 00:35:09,915 I really appreciate it. 718 00:35:10,405 --> 00:35:11,155 Matt: Thanks for inviting me. 719 00:35:11,255 --> 00:35:13,835 Corey: Matt Coulter, Senior Portfolio Architect 720 00:35:13,875 --> 00:35:16,725 at Liberty Mutual and oh so many more things. 721 00:35:17,105 --> 00:35:20,805 I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. 722 00:35:21,065 --> 00:35:23,205 If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a 5 723 00:35:23,215 --> 00:35:25,395 star review on your podcast platform of choice. 724 00:35:25,565 --> 00:35:28,735 Whereas if you hated this podcast, please leave a 5 star review on 725 00:35:28,735 --> 00:35:32,585 your podcast platform of choice, along with an insulting comment as 726 00:35:32,645 --> 00:35:36,335 well that I'll later read and dismiss as being not real serverless.