Chapter 1. Running functions in the cloud
This chapter covers
- Understanding why functions can be the primitives of your application
- Getting an overview of AWS Lambda
- Using functions for the back end of your application
- Building event-driven applications with functions
- Calling functions from a client
In recent years, cloud computing has changed the way we think about and implement IT services, allowing companies of every size to build powerful and scalable applications that could disrupt the industries in which they operated. Think of how Dropbox changed the way we use digital storage and share files with each other, or how Spotify changed the way we buy and listen to music.
Those two companies started small, and needed the capacity to focus their time and resources on bringing their ideas to life quickly. In fact, one of the most important advantages of cloud computing is that it frees developers from spending their time on tasks that don’t add real value to their work, such as managing and scaling the infrastructure, patching the operating system (OS), or maintaining the software stack used to run their code. Cloud computing lets them concentrate on the unique and important features they want to build.