We have the first two chapters!

Exciting times for us (and hopefully for you too 😜)! The book is starting to take some serious shape as we have finally published the first two chapters.

📘 What’s inside

The first chapter “Rust & Lambda“ details the two technologies that will be the focus of this book: the Rust programming language and AWS Lambda. We make the case for why these 2 technologies are worth your time and play so well together. We start by providing our definition of Serverless before getting into the details of AWS Lambda: how the platform works, the lifecycle of a Lambda function, what is a Lambda runtime, and the pricing model of Lambda. The second part of this first chapter focuses on Rust: what it is and what are its strengths. We give you a flavour of the syntax and some of the features we like. Finally, we dispel some of the common objections against adopting Rust. The third part of the chapter makes the case for using Rust with Lambda. We discuss the implications of using Rust against Lambda’s pricing model but we also touch on things such as carbon footprint, user and developer experience, correctness, and reliability. We close the chapter by analysing some other common runtimes to write efficient Lambda functions such as C++, Go, and LLRT and we compare those with Rust.

With chapter 2 “A 'Hello, Serverless' API“ we start to get our hands dirty and write some code! We don’t want to mess around too much with the theory and we want you to get some practical experience. We will learn how to write Lambda functions using Rust by building a URL shortener. But it’s going to be a journey and we need to pace ourselves step by step! So in this chapter, we are only going to do some warm-up by implementing the classic “Hello World” program but in a more serverless-y fashion! We will learn to use one of the most important tools of the trade: cargo-lambda. We will discuss the structure of a Rust-y Lambda function, how to run our Lambda locally, how to build and deploy to AWS, and, finally, how to run it in the cloud. We will also expose this Lambda through an HTTP interface using a Lambda function URL. But that’s not all, because, if you manage to get this far, there’s a challenge to keep you busy and to keep you exercising your Rust & Lambda muscles.

👇 How to get the new release

Getting the new release should be relatively straightforward.

• Go to Gumroad, log in, and visit your products library

• This is the list of the products you have purchased, you should see “Crafting Lambda functions in Rust (e-book)“ in there.

• If you click on it you will get to a page with all the download links

Let us know if you have any trouble with this.

🚀 What’s coming next

We are already working on chapters 3 and 4!

These two chapters are going to cover IaC (Infrastructure as Code) with SAM and how to integrate our Lambda functions with external systems such as other AWS services or even services outside AWS.

We’ll probably need a few more weeks before we are ready to release those, but we hope that, meanwhile, you’ll be busy enjoying what’s currently in the book and take some time to complete the challenges. You can also provide some feedback, which brings us to the next section!

💬 Your feedback is REALLY precious to us

What’s currently in the book is not necessarily in its final shape. Consider it more of a first draft! We want to try our best to create the best book on the topic of Lambda and Rust and to be able to do that we need to rely as much as we can on our reader’s feedback! Yes, that means YOU! Tell us what you like, what you didn’t like, if you found a typo or other mistakes, and if you wished we covered something else that we didn’t cover.

How can you do this? There are a few ways, so feel welcome to pick the one you prefer, we are not picky!

• Reply to this email or send a new one to [email protected]

• Reach out to Luciano or James on one of their (many) social channels

• Join our Discord server and write your feedback there!

• In-person, if you meet us at any event (don’t worry we can take constructive criticism straight in our faces… and we are very friendly too… oh yeah, we can even give you stickers of our lovely mascot, so talk to us!)

😇 OK, one last thingy: we need some more help!

If you like what we are doing and want to support us (a bit more!) there are 2 things we need help with:

• Gumroad reviews! We know the book is not yet complete but you can already leave us a review (and you can even update it later if you want). Receiving reviews will help us to make the book more visible in the store and it’s yet another way for you to provide feedback. To leave a review, just visit our product page in your products library. You’ll find the review box in the top-left section of the page.

• Spread the word! Please share this initiative with your friends and colleagues who might be interested in the topic of Rust and AWS Lambda

Your support truly means a lot to us, so THANK YOU! ❤️

That’s all we have for now!

Cheers!

— Luciano & James