AWS Lambda

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda is a compute service that executes arbitrary Python code in response to developer-defined AWS events, such as inbound API calls or file uploads to AWS' Simple Storage Service (S3).

Why is Lambda useful?

Lambda is often used as a "serverless" compute architecture, which allows developers to upload their Python code instead of spinning and configuring servers, deploying their code and scaling based on traffic.

Python on AWS Lambda

Lambda only had support for JavaScript, specifically Node.JS, when it was first released in late 2014. Python 2 developers were welcomed to the platform less than a year after its release, in October 2015. Lambda now has support for both Python 2.7 and 3.6.

Python-specific AWS Lambda resources

• Going Serverless with AWS Lambda and API Gateway

• Zappa is a serverless framework for deploying Python web applications. It's a really slick project and used even by internal AWS developers for their own application deployments. Be sure to read the Zappa blog as well for walkthroughs and new feature announcements.

• First Steps with AWS Lambda, Zappa, Flask and Python 3 shows how to use Zappa to deploy applications built with Flask and Python 3.

• Deploying a serverless flask app to AWS lambda using Zappa provides a screen capture of one developer deploying their application to Lambda.

• Building Scikit-Learn For AWS Lambda

• Code Evaluation With AWS Lambda and API Gateway shows how to develop a code evaluation API, to execute arbitrary code, with AWS Lambda and API Gateway.

General AWS Lambda resources

• The Serverless Start-Up - Down With Servers!

• AWS Lambda Serverless Reference Architectures

• The AWS Lambda tag on the official AWS blog contains all the related first-party tutorials

• Serverless Cost Calculator estimates the amount that AWS would charge based on Lambda exeuctions, average execution time and memory needed per execution.

What's next after learning about AWS Lambda?