Learn AWS Lambda for backend devs
Intermediate Free
AWS Lambda for backend devs
The execution model, real quotas, packaging and cold-start trade-offs, deploying with IaC, and how to actually debug a Lambda function in production - written for a backend engineer coming from long-running services.
- 5 lessons
- 36 min total
- Quiz in every lesson
What you'll learn
- A Lambda function runs in a managed, ephemeral execution environment - your code doesn't control the underlying host, and the environment can be reused (a 'warm start') or freshly created (a 'cold start', see lesson 3).
- A zip deployment is capped at 250 MB unzipped (including layers) - a container image (up to 10 GB) is the right choice once real dependencies (ML libraries, native binaries) push past that.
- A cold start is the one-time cost of provisioning a fresh execution environment - downloading code, starting the runtime, and running your top-level (module-load-time) initialization - before your handler runs for the first time on that environment.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) means your function's configuration - runtime, memory, timeout, IAM role, triggers - lives in version-controlled files, not console clicks, so it's reviewable, repeatable, and reproducible in a new account or region.
- Lambda sends everything written to stdout/stderr to CloudWatch Logs automatically, in a log group named /aws/lambda/<function-name> - no logging agent to install.
Curriculum
- 1. The execution model and real limits How a Lambda invocation actually runs, and the quotas that shape design decisions - verified against current AWS docs. 8 min (completed)
- 2. Packaging and dependencies Zip deployments vs container images, Lambda layers, and keeping a deployment package small enough to actually ship. 7 min (completed)
- 3. Cold starts What actually happens during a cold start, what makes them worse, and the real levers to reduce their impact. 7 min (completed)
- 4. Deploying with IaC Why hand-clicking a Lambda function through the console doesn't scale, and how CloudFormation/SAM/Terraform each approach the same deploy problem. 7 min (completed)
- 5. Debugging and observability Where Lambda logs actually go, structured logging, tracing a request across services, and the metrics worth alerting on. 7 min (completed)