I'm old enough to remember people saying "Look at this cool program I wrote in Java", but after a while people stopped saying "in Java" because we normalized that Java was a good tool to use for many applications. At what point in time will we stop saying "using AI", because AI has become normal?

Did I mention that App Inspector is really cool?

That feeling when AI has taken 4 minutes (and counting) to do a major refactor...

Step Functions users - if you rely on Execution History, you'll love App Inspector (by LocalStack). Not only can you see the data payload for state transitions, but also for every other service invocation across your ENTIRE application! Lambda logs and IAM Policy errors are included!

One thing I learned years ago is when visiting another country on "business", the immigration officer would ask if I'll be "writing code" (work - not allowed) as opposed to "discussing software" (business - allowed). Given I no longer write code (thanks to Claude), is everything I do "business"?

Artificial Intelligence has put me out of a job! My 3-year-old son loves to ask "Why?" questions, all day long... but if I don't give him the answer quickly enough, he exclaims "Let's ask Claude!".

If you're like most people, you probably didn't watch my AWS Community Day presentation live. That's OK, I'll forgive you... but don't make the same mistake twice. Watch the recording!

Years ago, people would tell me I write too many comments in my code. This was likely due to my decades of experience as a C programmer, working with code you couldn't understand without comments. But times have changed. My friend Claude loves the detailed way I describe what the code should do!

A big shout-out to the American Welding Society (AWS), that has apparently existed since 1919. How did I not hear about them earlier? Sorry, I won't be signing up for your training courses. www.aws.org/about/

Yet again, Stephen Hawking didn’t show up for the picnic I invited him to. #timetraveljokes

Had a great time chatting about Local Testing with AWS Step Functions on the Serverless Office Hours this week. Thanks to Jas Narula, Scott King,and @edjgeek.bsky.social for the opportunity. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mdv...

And we're on a roll... here's ANOTHER newly-announced AWS feature that LocalStack already supports. Thanks to our partnership with the AWS Step Functions team, you can use the new TestState enhancements with LocalStack! (AI = Already Implemented!) #localstack #awsstepfunctions #ai

Hmmm... it's a week before re:Invent, and the AWS news feed has been silent for the past 35 minutes... should I be worried? I'd expect a lot more announcements at this time! Oh wait, never mind... another announcement just came in 😉 aws-news.com

I sometimes miss reading CoEs, especially on days like today. If you know, you know. 

It's odd to realize that exactly 50 years ago, my mother took me to my first day at school. Happy belated birthday, younger me! Now go and buy shares in a newly-formed startup named Microsoft!

I can confirm it's true - AI is making me lazy and not wanting to think too hard about writing code. I had a moment of panic today when GitHub Copilot stopped auto-completing my code, and I was forced to remember the syntax I needed. Turns out my "free credits" expired. github.com/features/cop...

And given how excited I am about the AWS Toolkit now supporting LocalStack, I wrote a blog post showing how it's done! Enjoy! blog.localstack.cloud/aws-toolkit-...

We're so excited to finally get to share some BIG updates! First, AWS Toolkit for VS Code can now connect to LocalStack making it easy to build, debug & test Lambdas directly from your local machine without leaving the comfort of your IDE! Read our tutorial: blog.localstack.cloud/aws-toolkit-...

Serverless developers, I'm excited to see this collaboration between LocalStack and the AWS Lambda team. You can now use AWS Toolkit for VSCode with LocalStack, complete with Lambda Debugging, making even easier to develop, debug, and test your applications locally! aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/ac...

Without even realizing it, I’ve been using GitHub Copilot in VS Code, and I love it! ❤️ After several years of being frustrated at coding assistants, I’m finally enjoying the experience and getting a productivity boost! I might even pay $10/month for it!

CloudFront Functions and Lambda@Edge are incredibly useful. The only downside is the difficulty in developing and testing them, as deployments take considerable time, and AWS provides no local testing capabilities. This has changed with LocalStack.

Hey Step Functions developers - if you need to test your State Machines, and you're sad that Step Functions Local is no longer supported, read my exciting new blog post, then switch to LocalStack instead.

First world problems... you try to create an Amazon S3 bucket with a unique name that nobody else in the world would use... but then you realize it's already in use, by yourself at a previous company.

When they realize you're faking the whole cloud with LocalStack 😏

Is it just me, or do other people accidentally open the App Store when they really want VSCode? Perhaps it's just me 😑

With the increase in AI-generated videos, at what point should I stop believing what public figures are saying? Or should I ignore everything on social media and only watch news from the BBC? At this point in time, Doctor Who is feeling quite credible!

Does anybody else feel less miserable when they look at my odometer reading? (terrible joke of the day).

I just drove by the theatre where I watched Star Wars as a boy in 1977. For months after that I dreamed of having my own R2D2 Droid. Now I realize the 50th anniversary is just two years away, but I own an iPhone not an Android.

After relocating to New Zealand, there are two important things I miss from Canada. 1) Central heating, 2) Tim Hortons Sausage BELT with Steeped Tea. But what's really sad is that after eating 100s of Sausage BELTs, I don't have a single photo of those delicious sandwiches! Just one of this cup 😑

And this is yet more proof that Step Functions has one of the best AWS consoles!

🔥 AWS Step Functions leveled up with new release! New execution graph updates: • Collapse/Expand Map & Parallel states • New state icons and visual improvements Making operating a complex workflows simple! 🚀 #AWS #Serverless #StepFunction #CloudComputing

Product idea? The “change of address” feature is not a solved problem. After my recent international move, I had 30 places to give my new address to. About 20 were simple online profile updates, but 10 required support calls/tickets. And 4 of those required multiple tickets to the “backend” team!

Tired of waiting on IAM tickets or racking up surprise AWS bills? @jetbrains.com shows how to build & test a full Spring Boot app with S3 + SQS locally using LocalStack + Testcontainers. Same AWS APIs. No cloud required. 🔗 blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2025/05...

This LocalStack launch is particularly special to me, as we now support the "mocking" feature from Step Functions Local. Now you can use JSONata and Variables (and other recent Step Functions features) with improved testing support!

If you deploy software to an ECS container, but suffer from slow deploy times whenever you make a code change, here's a solution from LocalStack. Code is directly mounted from your local filesystem into the ECS container, so code updates are instant!

Another funny UX example, this time from Rakuten Viber. The $4.99 worth of credits can be purchased for the low price of $7.99. As far as I can tell, the first $ is USD and the other $ is NZD. 🤦

In typical "Black Mirror" fashion, here's an episode showing how NOT to focus on customer value when building a SaaS subscription offering. www.imdb.com/title/tt3012...

Super-useful hint I learned from The CDK Book. When using CDK with TypeScript, always run with "npx cdk synth" to use the version of CDK from your project, rather than defaulting to your global CDK. thecdkbook.com

If you're like me, you probably struggled with figuring out when to use SNS vs SQS vs EventBridge vs other messaging solutions. This article is fun and easy to read, and nails the differences quite accurately.

🥁Join @awsfanboy.com and I on The Zacs' Show Talking AWS where we talk about Step Functions with IDE (VS Code) experience with JSONata and variables. Going live in 15 mins! 🎦 youtube.com/live/_ra7nzt... #StepFunctions #AWS #Serverless

I guess I'm not cool any more. I tried so hard to be an early adopter for Studio Ghibli portraits, but ChatGPT failed five times to render my complete image. It then told me to come back and try tomorrow! Anybody know a better way?

This is the first new release of LocalStack since I joined the company. I didn't contribute to this one, but it's exciting to work at LocalStack where Developer Experience is the highest form of customer obsession.

Sigh... perhaps I got used to Amazon's incredibly high standards, but when I try to log onto my banking application today, I'm greeted by a blank screen and lots of JavaScript errors. Eventually I found this notice. An "under maintenance" banner would be better.

Is remote work challenging? Yes and no... I wake up at 3:30am many days, but that's the joy of working for a European company. Lots of meetings from 4am-8am, followed by focus time until 1pm. After that, I enjoy life... no gridlock traffic, no overcrowded shopping malls... you should try it!

When did you first order something from Amazon.com? For me, it was likely this book order from April 26, 1999. The email design has certainly improved over the years, and so has the estimated delivery time (back then it was 2-12 weeks).

Deploying straight to AWS 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘰𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺? 𝗕𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲, 𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗴𝗼. IAM misconfigurations, API failures, staging breakage—you name it, it happens.

Oh Daylight Savings… you’ve done it again. Moved some of my meetings by an hour, while other meetings remain unchanged. The fun of working with colleagues from around the world!

Dear @awscloud, I'm wanting to update my contact address for my AWS account, but even though the country is set to Canada, it's asking for my "state". Last I heard, Canada has provinces rather than states, or am I supposed to enter "Canada" as the state now? (joking!)

Now here's an AWS Step Functions feature I've been eagerly awaiting, and I know many others have too. Now you can enjoy the usability of Workflow Studio with the power of building applications inside your IDE. No more switching between IDE and browser to get your work done.

In the realm of things I should have known, but just learned... 🤦‍♂️ In Kubernetes, the term pod came about because the Docker mascot is Moby, the whale, and a group of whales is called a pod.