Tackling Lambda challenges #1: flaky latency

Serverless development is more popular than ever. No servers to maintain, out-of-the-box scalability and pay-as-you-go pricing make it an attractive platform for developers, but these advantages come with a unique set of challenges. For instance, the response time for otherwise identical requests seems to fluctuate, structuring projects is not a straightforward exercise and local development is perceived as challenging. Luckily these challenges are anything but insurmountable, so let’s tackle them together. This post will be the first in a series that zooms in on challenges a developer may face. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are the ones that developers encounter rather quickly. We will start with inconsistent response times, also called flaky latency.

Flaky latency

Raise your hand if you have analysed the response times of your Lambda functions and found inconsistencies. Whether and how high you have just raised your hand will depend on a number of factors. Regardless, most serverless developers will at some point encounter flaky latency and observe that some responses take significant