S2E7: Advanced AWS Lambda

In this episode of "From Cover to Code", Michael & Angela take AWS Lambda to the next level with live demos, opinionated advice, and a few laughs along the way.

This discussion covers:

* Error-handling tactics – synchronous vs. asynchronous invocations, DLQs, and why API Gateway sometimes hides your 500s.

* Tracing, logging & metrics – setting up AWS X-Ray and reading traces that flag cold starts, retries and faults.

* Scaling & concurrency – live Java demo shows Lambda spinning up extra instances (watch the function IDs change).

* Versioning, aliases & traffic shifting – when they help, and when they just add risk.

* Cold-start realities – why they now affect less than 1 % of invocations and when provisioned concurrency is (or isn’t) worth the bill.

* State, VPCs, layers & custom runtimes – persist data the right way and plug Lambda into the rest of your stack.

📂 Code from the episode

Grab every demo (Java *and* Python) in the repo:

https://github.com/covertocode/season-2-programming-aws-lambda/tree/main/chapter-8-advanced-aws-lambda

Find us online at covertocode.com.

Hosted by:

• Angela A. @scooterphoenix
• Michael J. @managedkaos ​