iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 29/09/2026

6 weeks ago, I published my Getting Started: #Rust course on Dometrain. The reviews have been fantastic! That said it's by no means possible to cover a language as cool as Rust in a single course, so I've followed that up going a layer deeper. DHH would be proud. dometrain.com/course/deep-...

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 29/06/2026

Storytelling is such a HUGE part of creating content for me, whether it's conference talks or videos. I've been playing around the last couple of weeks with taking this to another level with a bit of hand drawn animations. #architecture #systemsdesign #animations #storytelling

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 29/04/2026

Your Guide to Simple, Evolvable Software in Event-Driven Systems is here! In this video, Scott and me talk about how to write cleaner, more evolvable code if you're building an application that needs to process messages from a queue, topic or bus. #software #architecture youtu.be/UBhxmVU70j0

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 21/04/2026

Heading to the AWS London Summit tomorrow? I'll see you there! I'm giving a talk about how to actual understand AI applications in production alongside Virgin Atlantic. If you want to catch up my DM's are always open. Send me a message, and let's chat. #aws #awslondonsummit #serverless #ai

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 20/04/2026

How often have you joined a new team or worked with someone more experienced and they've said "Just use a ......" Just use a queue. Just use an outbox. Oh, for that you just need to use the saga pattern. Fear not, I've got your back. Packaged up as a nice interactive website. justuseaqueue.com

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 16/04/2026

Spending millions on platform engineering is not innovation. It's not human-centric. And it's definitely not solving the problems your users actually have. Design thinking has a principle: focus on verbs, not nouns. Don't ask "how do we build better infrastructure?" Ask, "how might we enhance a d

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 13/04/2026

Good design thinking starts with a story, not a solution. "At the heart of any good story is a central narrative about the way an idea satisfies a need in some powerful way." blog.jameseastham.co.uk/blog/2026-04...

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 06/04/2026

Ever had a green CI/CD pipeline but your Lambda deploy is actually broken? Tests passed, but a configuration mistake means prod is dead. In this video you'll learn how to use Lambda Aliases/Versions & AWS Code Deploy to safely rollout new features youtu.be/gsLkVmkkOxc #serverless #aws #dotnet

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 24/03/2026

Cold starts are a problem in serverless you say......

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 23/03/2026

Happy fibre day to me. Today is a good day.

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 23/03/2026

Think about how you process messages. The classic background worker in .NET burns cash just idling, polling for work that might not exist. With Lambda, AWS handles the polling, your code only runs/reacts when messages land, so you just pay for actual processing. youtu.be/ES962zkbhVs #serverless #d

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 20/03/2026

A timely reminder from Vercel's terms and conditions. If the service is free, you are the product. If they really cared about their customers, this would be explicit when you sign up. Except it isn't, buried in the terms and conditions that none of us ever read. The enshittifcation continues....

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 12/03/2026

Built a custom class that hooks Lambda to API Gateway with a single snippet. Reusable abstractions, loops, conditionals. Writing infra code should feel like writing app code. I walked through it in a recent video, but wanted to share the approach here. #serverless #aws #dotnet youtu.be/sX3K1tIwYnw

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 09/03/2026

The AWS CDK + .NET workflow is underrated. Defining infra in C# means you get real IDE support, compile-time checks, & can codify infra best practices in actual code. No more YAML, no more "magic incantations" IAM policies. Just .NET all the way down. youtu.be/sX3K1tIwYnw #serverless #aws #dotnet

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 01/03/2026

Both in the same week 😍 what a Sunday.

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 01/03/2026

Creative destruction, the dismantling of established practices to clear the way for innovation. I like to read from a lot of different domains. And found this idea from economics back in the 1940s. Sounds a lot like what we are living through doesn't it?

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 23/02/2026

I still remember the first time I ran a .NET on Lambda. I’d convinced myself that keeping memory low would keep costs in check. That first call was so slow I wondered if AWS had just dropped my request. In this video, I tear down the common myth that .NET on Lambda is 'slow'. youtu.be/roIIujtLaQ4

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 16/02/2026

I've used the Zettelkasten system for knowledge organisation for years. I've tried it in Obsidian, Notion and Affine. None quite fit my workflow. A self hosted knowledge management system, with semantic search, embeddings, note linking. github.com/jeastham1993...

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 10/02/2026

The photographers at @ndcconferences.com always do such a FANTASTIC job!

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 09/02/2026

Been burned by “classic” AWS Lambda structure in .NET—700 lines in one file, validation, business logic, and DynamoDB calls all jammed together. Debugging or unit testing that? Nightmare fuel. Thankfully, I've got the video just for you. #serverless #dotnet youtu.be/_EIndrP94Lw

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 30/01/2026

"Our findings suggest that AI-enhanced productivity is not a shortcut to competence and AI assistance should be carefully adopted into workflows to preserve skill formation – particularly in safety-critical domains........" No shit! Report was also sponsored by Anthropic arxiv.org/html/2601.20...

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 28/01/2026

Very excited to be bringing a brand new talk to NDC London later today. In it, you'll learn about some fundamental patterns of system design. Whatever 'style' of system you're building. From a monolith to a chaos inducing non-deterministic agent. I hope to see you there! #systemdesign

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 26/01/2026

Ever tried deploying a .NET Web API with almost the same DX as building in ASP.NET, but straight into AWS Lambda? Lambda Annotations turns your methods into HTTP endpoints w/ just a few attributes, DI still works, and w/ Aspire + the AWS emulator, local dev feels pretty native. youtu.be/va100QlU2Vs

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 17/01/2026

Is this album as close to the perfect rap album as it comes?

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 11/12/2025

New course alert 🎉 It's taken me over 2 years of creating courses to finally go back to my roots. Want to learn how to build .NET apps on #AWS? This is the course for you. In it, you'll learn about the core services you need to care about to build on AWS. #dotnet dometrain.com/course/getti...

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 03/12/2025

Fantastic article on the Guardian about Spotify Wrapped and 'removing critical thought about things'. Particularly this little section here. I'm not bashing Spotify Wrapped by the way, it can be surprising. But it does show 'thinking' is being automated a way. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/d...

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 03/12/2025

Ever had to change the structure of an event? Wondered how to do that in a safe way that doesn't break all the consumers? Luckily, I have the video for you. I cover how you should think about versioning, and how to depreceate events in your event-driven system safely. youtu.be/pXMvi0-RB1I

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 02/12/2025

Now we're getting to the exciting stuff. AWS Lambda now support durable executions. This is one of my favourite features in Cloudflare, and having this available natively in Lambda is nice. Some caveats around using versions. But a brilliant release. #serverless aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/bu...

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 01/12/2025

Fascinating Monday night reading. static1.squarespace.com/static/65c9d...

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 25/11/2025

I came across an AMA on Reddit last night with Benedict Cumberbatch. He pretty perfectly captures my current view on the slop filled world we are heading for.

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 18/11/2025

Ever wish your system would document itself? It'd be lovely wouldn't it! In this video, I walk you through how you might start to build a self-documeting system using your events, your telemetry and the #OpenTelemetry SemConv. youtu.be/vP768bw_t2s #software #architecture #observability

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 05/11/2025

Excited to announce the new Datadog Commmunity YouTube channel. A new channel dedicated to talking about wider challenges in the tech industry that all of you are facing in your day to day work. Link to subscribe and make sure you don't miss a video www.youtube.com/@DatadogComm... #software

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 28/10/2025

Throwback listening on the train home from London. One of my favourite albums growing up.

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 27/10/2025

The most beautiful lady in the world ❤️✅ Royal Albert Hall ✅ Westlife ✅ Full philharmonic orchestra ✅ I'm a lucky man

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 21/10/2025

Had an absolute blast at ServerlessDays Milano. Incredibly well ran conference, great talks. Kudos to the organisers and those that hung on until the very end to see my talk. #serverless #serverlessdays

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 21/10/2025

@julianwood.com showing us all the cool new tools and techniques that you need to know about as a serverless developer. #serverless #serverlessmilano

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 21/10/2025

Daniele Frasca up next talking all things multi-region serverless architecture. Love seeing real world applications of things like cell based architecture. Not relevant for everyone, but a powerful pattern to be aware of at scale. #serverless #serverlessdays

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 21/10/2025

@theburningmonk.com kicking things off at Serverless Days Milano talking about the hard parts of #serverless.

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 21/10/2025

Let's go ServerlessDays Milano 🎉 🇮🇹 #serverless #milan #italy

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 14/10/2025

Last week I released my "Deep Dive: Solutions Architecture" course on Dometrain. This week, reviews have started coming in. Feedback like, and genuienly helping people is the reason I started doing content creation in the first place. dometrain.com/course/deep-... #software #softwarearchitecture

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 26/09/2025

One of my, if not my #1, favourite sporting competition. Let's go Europe. #rydercup

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 22/09/2025

Stag do ✅ class weekend in Edinburgh, and I made it out alive. Wins all round. (The dog didn't join us by the way)

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 18/09/2025

Great to catch up with Heitor Lessa and Nicolas Moutschen in Amsterdam yesterday. Always good to catch up with old friends 🎉

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 17/08/2025

Sunday night vibes 🍺☀️

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 06/08/2025

Feeling the sting of underutilized CPU cores? Discover how serverless functions and containers bring different strengths to the table—and how to leverage them for optimal efficiency! youtu.be/S9pSZiHjssg #serverless #containers #aws #softwaredevelopment #architecture #development

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James Eastham @jameseastham.co.uk · 04/08/2025

I've said it before and I'll say it again, AWS ComSum is one of the best conferences I've attended globally. And I'm lucky enough to be back again this year. I'll be there talking about 'Serverless or Containers? Who Cares Pick Both!" - Your guide for managing complexity in software. See you there

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