Insights into Serverless and modern backends

Learning from tutorials is great! You follow some steps, learn a smol lesson, and feel like you got this. Then you go into an interview, get a question from the boss, or encounter a new situation and o-oh.

Shit, how does this work again? 馃槄

That's the problem with tutorials. They're not how the world works. Real software is a mess. A best-effort pile of duct tape and chewing gum. You need deep understanding, not recipes.

I've been building web backends since ~2004 when they were just called websites. With these curated essays I want to share the hard lessons learned. Leave your email and get the Serverless and Modern Backend email series.

Latest Serverless and Backend articles from Swizec

10 articles from March 2021 show all

Your serverless questions, answered

When talk comes to serverless, engineers have lots of questions. Here are some answers 馃槉

How do you know if serverless fits your project?

The hallmark of a true expert is understanding about the pros and cons of your technical decisions.

Serverless Handbook coming Mar 31st

Serverless is the future. New book coming out Mar 31st and it's looking bomb

Different medium, different mindset

Ever wondered what it's like to make a physical book? It ain't as easy as shipping code lemme tell ya 馃槄

Go full-stack in 5min with your first cloud function

How *do* you build a JavaScript function that runs in the cloud serverlessly? Here's how to get started with Vercel, Netlify, or AWS Lambda

Can you automate love?

What's the laziest thing you've ever built? For me it's a bot that sends cute pictures every day

If you can JavaScript, you can backend

When you think of a backend or server developer, who comes to mind? A wizard of arcane magics. The future belongs to full-stack frontend engineers.

That time serverless melted my credit card

Serverless is pretty cheap. But you *can* get it wrong.

Why serverless fits side-projects perfectly

How do you provision servers for no load most days THEN ALL THE LOAD THIS MINUTE? That's how side-projects work and it's hard

How a $12 AWS bill powers a $50k business

my point is that running server code on the web has become ridiculously cheap *and* easy