There are lots of ways to implement API versioning. Picking one is an exercise in balance: what voices will you listen to?

For us, the most important voice is the voice of the customer. There are lots of customers, though, and many of them just want to get the job done. They are expecting us to be the experts and make it easy for them to build integrations that Just Work™.

Whenever you retrieve a list of things in an API I’ve managed to influence, unless the size of the list is internally capped at an incredibly small number, you’ll see that the API supports limit and cursor query parameters to allow you to page through the results. This post will explore what those parameters do, how they work, and some of the limitations of the approach.

If I had to pick one word to describe AWS re:Invent 2017, it would be “popular”. There were over 43 000 attendees this year. The conference organizers and staff did an amazing job rising to the challenge, keeping folks corralled and working hard to manage expectations. I had a fun time; it was great to meet up with old friends, make a few new ones, and learn stuff at the same time.

How much networking do you need to understand when your primary focus is serverless development?

A good friend of mine has a habit of throwing gauntlets around like they’re nothing. “So, Geoff,” he’ll start casually, “did you know there are some new AWS specialty certifications in beta now?” This is usually about the time that I realize I’m in for a world of pain, uh, learning. It turns out that this time AWS has come up with three exams that I’ll conservatively call pro-level. I’ve been learning a lot over the past year and a bit, negotiating a career transition from telecom to security, so I’d consider myself a firm novice when it comes to all this stuff, but it’s not like we were doing nothing over in the old world, so I figured I’d check out the landscape for the security certification.