The Curious Engineer

All blogs / DevOps / SRE / infrastructure

Ready, Set, Cloud!

readysetcloud.io/blog

Follow all blog posts by Allen

DevOps / SRE / infrastructureAI / MLSoftware / engineering practice

’19’20’21’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
191 from 24 Apr 2019 to 13 Oct 2026
Posting
monthly (14 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://www.readysetcloud.io/blog/index.json

2026 12

  1. Give your agent an agenda
  2. Agent memory needs more than vector search
  3. You’re still the bottleneck
  4. Payment is authorization
  5. DynamoDB Streams is not an outbox
  6. Send your events later
  7. PSA: That probably doesn’t need to be SaaS
  8. Your agent is repeating itself
  9. Local agents scare me
  10. Your AI agents are a security nightmare
  11. Postman might be my new favorite IDE
  12. When serving images from S3 stopped being good enough

2025 7

  1. Road to re:Invent Hackathon: How Not to Build a Serverless App
  2. Cognitive Dissonance
  3. Multi-Agent Collaboration
  4. Trust will make or break AI agents
  5. Observability for MCP servers with Kestra
  6. Your API might be someone else’s model
  7. I’m back!

2024 14

  1. AppSync Events Are Great, But Did You Really Need Serverless WebSockets?
  2. Okay, Gitpod Flex is actually pretty cool
  3. Scaling community growth with code
  4. July cancer update
  5. AWS Step Functions vs Temporal: A Practical Developer Comparison
  6. A personal update
  7. This is the best new feature from POST/CON
  8. Serverless Postgres with Neon: First Impressions from a Production Mindset
  9. Show your personality
  10. How to trigger events every 30 seconds in AWS
  11. I didn’t know it did that - Postman Postbot
  12. Be an enabler
  13. How I Built Automatic Click-Tracking and Content Spotlights For My Website
  14. Building For Interactivity: When Async Is Not Enough

2023 37

  1. How I Built A Santa Chatbot To Mess With My Brother
  2. This Is NOT A Re:Invent Recap
  3. Using AI To Go From JSON to API in Seconds
  4. How I Used Amazon Bedrock to Write, Schedule, and Post My Tweets
  5. WebSockets, gRPC, MQTT, and SSE - Which Real-Time Notification Method Is For You?
  6. Test-Driven Development with AI: The Right Way to Code Using Generative AI
  7. Seriously, Write Your API Spec First
  8. Turn Any API Into An Event-Driven Engine
  9. How to Process Stripe Subscriptions In Your Serverless Apps
  10. Is Coding On Its Way Out?
  11. A Beginner’s Guide to the Serverless Application Model (SAM)
  12. What Is “Production-Grade” Software?
  13. Solo SaaS - How I Built a Serverless Workout App By Myself
  14. Prompt Engineering: The Future of AI-Driven Development
  15. Making Sense of Cross-Posting: Knowing Where And Why to Publish Your Content
  16. ChatGPT Changed How I Write Software
  17. Why Community Is The Best Source of Growth For Your Tech Career
  18. Level Up Your Blog With Writer Analytics and Text-to-Speech
  19. Serverless Speed Test: Comparing Lambda, Step Functions, App Runner, and Direct Integrations
  20. Are We Making Lambda Too Hard?
  21. Build What Matters
  22. The Serverless Toolbox - Tools To Build Serverless Apps Easier
  23. My ChatGPT Workout Generator Just Got Better
  24. Are Serverless Services Worth It?
  25. The Solution Architect’s Guide to Serverless
  26. Build Faster and Easier APIs With User Sessions
  27. Why API Specs Are the Backbone of Successful Development
  28. Building a Serverless Post Scheduler For Static Websites
  29. Serverless Lessons - Location Is Everything!
  30. Automate Your Life and Save Time By Going Serverless
  31. 5 Tips for Building the Best Developer Experience Possible
  32. ChatGPT Is My New Personal Trainer
  33. The Risks of Moving Too Quickly with Serverless Development
  34. Growing Your Career in the Evolving Tech Field
  35. I Have Good News And Bad News About Your Cloud Metrics
  36. How I Built An Open Source Serverless Newsletter Platform
  37. Serverless In 2023 - A Shift In Focus

2022 51

  1. 2022 in Serverless
  2. Lessons Learned From Writing 50 Blog Posts In A Year
  3. I Built a Serverless App To Cross-Post My Blogs
  4. I Don’t Know What Serverless Is Anymore
  5. Going Serverless? Build An Observability Mindset
  6. Why Serverless Direct Integrations Aren’t As Scary As They Sound
  7. The Current State of Infrastructure From Code
  8. Understanding Total Cost of Ownership of Serverless and Container Applications
  9. When Is Serverless More Expensive Than Containers?
  10. The Power of High Functioning Dev Teams
  11. Serverless API Essentials: PUT vs PATCH
  12. Skip The Lambda Function, Connect Directly To Your AWS Services
  13. Infrastructure From Code - My First Impression
  14. Success With Step Functions - Finding a Way To Build That Doesn’t Suck
  15. Serverless API Essentials - Idempotency
  16. Let’s Stop Talking About Serverless Cold Starts
  17. How I Became An AWS Serverless Hero
  18. Best Practices for Building Serverless Microservices
  19. Starting Over With Purpose - My Serverless Adventure
  20. 3 Things to Know Before Building a Multi-Tenant Serverless App
  21. What Does The Future Hold For Serverless?
  22. Solutions Architect Tips - How to Design Applications For Growth
  23. What Is Data Gravity And Is It Important With Serverless?
  24. Three Reasons Why Blogging Makes You A Better Developer
  25. Going API-First: Your First 30 Days
  26. What Is Serverless Enablement And Why Is It Important?
  27. Building Serverless Applications That Scale The Perfect Amount
  28. Solutions Architect Tips - How to Design Around Serverless Service Limits
  29. Three Ways to Retry Failures In Your Serverless Application
  30. Are You Really API-First Or Do You Just Think It?
  31. Quick Optimizations You Should Make to Your Serverless Applications
  32. Solutions Architect Tips - How to Build Your First Architecture Diagram
  33. AWS Step Functions Pitfalls: 3 Real Problems (and When to Avoid Them)
  34. Introducing A New Cross-Cutting Architecture Diagram: The Critical Path
  35. How to Load Test Your Apps For Free By Going Serverless
  36. Is Disaster Recovery Worth It In Serverless Applications?
  37. Going Serverless? Governance Is Everything
  38. Lambda vs Step Functions: The Battle of Cost and Performance
  39. How to Build Lightning Fast APIs with AWS Step Functions
  40. Build Better Serverless APIs By Going Storage First
  41. Solutions Architect Tips - 3 Tricks For Keeping Sight Of The Bigger Picture
  42. The Importance of Proper Serverless API Design
  43. Lessons Learned From Switching to AWS SDK v3
  44. Solutions Architect Tips - The 6 Secrets to Building Inspiring Proposals
  45. The 5-Step Checklist for Serverless Load Testing
  46. Intro to AWS WebSockets Part Five: Custom Domain Name
  47. Intro to AWS WebSockets Part Four: User Notifications
  48. Intro to AWS WebSockets Part Three: Documentation
  49. Intro to AWS WebSockets Part Two: Auth
  50. Intro to AWS WebSockets
  51. And The 2022 Word Of The Year Is…

2021 21

  1. How To Refactor Serverless Applications The Right Way
  2. Webhooks Explained Simply… With Car Shopping!
  3. APIs Explained Simply… With TV Remotes!
  4. Distributed Computing Explained Simply… With Ducks!
  5. The Three Key Phases to Successful Iteration
  6. Why Death Marches Aren’t As Bad As They Sound
  7. Solutions Architect Tips - The 5 Key Factors That Drive Application Cost
  8. Solutions Architect Tips - Decoding the AWS Serverless Design Principles
  9. How (and Why) You Need To Start Generating Your Serverless Infrastructure Diagrams
  10. 5 Architecture Diagram Types Every Solutions Architect Should Know
  11. You Can Have It Fast Or You Can Have It Right - The Software Dilemma
  12. How to Work Yourself Out Of Your Tech Job (And Why That’s a Good Thing)
  13. How to Configure a Static IP For Your Serverless App
  14. Making the Move From Developer to Solutions Architect
  15. The Mighty Metaphor: Your New Secret Weapon in Tech
  16. Build Auth Once With A Shared Lambda Authorizer
  17. Power Tuning Your Serverless API For Happy Customers
  18. Automate Your Automation with CloudFormation Macros
  19. Adding a Custom Domain to AWS API Gateway
  20. How to Create an Extension for Your Open API Specification
  21. It’s 2021. This Is Where Your Focus Should Be In Tech.

2020 33

  1. I Made the Best Christmas Present Ever… Again. This Time With Alexa, WebSockets, and Mobile Apps
  2. What To Be Thankful For In Tech In 2020
  3. The Beginner’s Guide to Software Estimation
  4. How to Automatically Monitor API Performance with Dynamic Testing
  5. How to Write Software at the Last Responsible Moment
  6. How to Integrate Your App With Webhooks Using Amazon SNS
  7. Dynamic Test Generation with Open API Spec 3.0
  8. Why Hackathons Drive Innovation
  9. Moving Toward Modern - How to Get to the Cloud as a Large Software Company
  10. 4 Reasons You Should NEVER Use Proof of Concepts in Production
  11. Micro Frontends, Role-Based Applications, and You
  12. API First Development: How to Build Consistent, Meaningful APIs with Postman
  13. The Challenges of Stateless Architecture: How to Monitor Your Serverless Application
  14. Think Unique. Build the Right Software, Not the Easy Software
  15. Doing Continuous Delivery? Build A Continuous Changelog with AWS and JIRA
  16. Take the Leap! 10 Steps to Building Your Personal Blog With AWS + Hugo
  17. Are You Really Ready for CI/CD?
  18. How to Easily Load Test Serverless Apps With Postman and AWS
  19. The Greenfield Paradox: Why Is Building a New App So Easy and Also So Hard?
  20. How I Built an Automated Text Messaging Ordering System In Less Than A Day
  21. I Owe My Career In Software to Running
  22. Stop Overthinking Your Complex Solutions and Start Building Simple Ones
  23. 5 Reasons to Finally Start That Side Project You’ve Been Putting Off
  24. 30 Things I Learned About Software Before I Turned 30
  25. How to Choose the Best Programming Language for Your New Project
  26. Itturat. Ituratte. Iterat. Iterate. Iterate.
  27. How to Build Both Kinds of AWS Lambda Layers. (Yes, There Are Two)
  28. Will Waterfall Development Ever Die? Probably Not.
  29. How to Migrate Your REST API to the New HTTP API in AWS
  30. You Should Open Up That API You’ve Been Working On
  31. How I Built a Serverless Geo-Search App with DynamoDB
  32. Leading From Behind: Enable Your Team By Doing Less
  33. 5 Steps to Making a Predictable Cost Model for AWS Serverless Projects

2019 16

  1. How I Built the Best Christmas Gift Ever With Twilio, AWS, and OutSystems
  2. What Do You Mean, Innovate?
  3. New Project? Just Hardcode It
  4. How To Build a CI/CD Pipeline in AWS in 5 Minutes and 58 Seconds
  5. Getting Started with Mentorship. What Is It All About?
  6. Getting Started with Your Startup: Turn Your Idea Into a Reality
  7. How to Automate OAuth2 Token Renewal in Postman
  8. Serverless. You Keep Using That Word. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
  9. So You Landed Your First Programming Job — Now What?
  10. I Don’t Like the Provider Model Anymore — Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Either
  11. 5 Steps to Building the Perfect Team for your Startup
  12. Design to Delight: Raising the Bar on Software Design
  13. Choosing the Right Platform for Your New App
  14. The 5 W’s of Rapid Prototyping
  15. Working Backwards: My Experience with the AWS Design Strategy
  16. 8 Steps to Facilitating a Captivating Retrospective