I Made My First AWS Lambda Function (And It Did… Absolutely Nothing)

If you're anything like me, you've probably seen those buzzwords floating around: "serverless," "Lambda functions," "event-driven computing." It sounds futuristic - like programming without writing code, or spinning up logic that just exists in the cloud. So naturally, I wanted in. A few days ago, I set out to make my first AWS Lambda function. I wasn't trying to build anything crazy. I just wanted to see if I could wire something together and watch it work. Spoiler: I did. My Lambda didn't do much, but I saw it work - and that made all the difference. Here's how it went. The Plan: Trigger a Lambda From an S3 Upload I came up with the most basic idea possible: Upload a file to S3 → have that action trigger a Lambda function I wasn't worried about the function doing anything useful. I just wanted to see the gears turn: trigger → function → log. You could say it was a science experiment. The goal wasn't utility. It was proof.

May 4, 2025 - 11:37

I Made My First AWS Lambda Function (And It Did… Absolutely Nothing)

If you're anything like me, you've probably seen those buzzwords floating around: "serverless," "Lambda functions," "event-driven computing." It sounds futuristic - like programming without writing code, or spinning up logic that just exists in the cloud.
So naturally, I wanted in.
A few days ago, I set out to make my first AWS Lambda function. I wasn't trying to build anything crazy. I just wanted to see if I could wire something together and watch it work. Spoiler: I did. My Lambda didn't do much, but I saw it work - and that made all the difference.
Here's how it went.

The Plan: Trigger a Lambda From an S3 Upload
I came up with the most basic idea possible:

Upload a file to S3 → have that action trigger a Lambda function

I wasn't worried about the function doing anything useful. I just wanted to see the gears turn: trigger → function → log.
You could say it was a science experiment. The goal wasn't utility. It was proof.