Programming AWS Lambda by John Chapin & Mike Roberts

This book covers everything you could want to know about using Lambda. It starts out my explaining the terms and reasons for using. I think it would have been good to have a reference to the services for readers new to AWS. The diagrams and screenshots were excellent.

There were good comparisons about tradeoffs like Python vs Java and even within Java. I like that the first example was built-in JavaScript to focus on the mechanics of creating a lambda before having to write one. In fact, it was so smooth that I missed the code. (It was provided by AWS Lambda rather than printed in the book). I also liked the advice to delete the lambda stack if getting into trouble.

The examples use Maven, but you didn't need to know it going in. You do need to feel comfortable reading Java, JSON and XML. I learned a number of new things. And I was happy to see newer things included like CloudWatch Insights and Provisioned Concurrency.

Chapter 5 was a comparatively long chapter (50 pages) but covered a lot and was easy to understand. I like that there were chapters on testing, logging, etc. I would have liked to see JUnit 5 used instead of JUnit 4 since this is a new book. (I was also surprised not to see static imports used, but that's probably personal preference.) The chapter full of problems and solutions was great!

Each chapter ends with exercises to get hands on experience. I was very happy to see that! A couple are labeled as “extended task” which is nice because you know what you are getting into.

I give this book 9 out of 10 horseshoes.

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Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of the NYJavaSIG.