Foundation Track: Serverless Architecture Basics
The Foundation track builds a mental model for serverless computing from first principles. You'll learn core concepts, system thinking, and architectural principles that underpin all serverless systems.
What You'll Learn
- Serverless as a compute model: Shift from "where code runs" to "what triggers it"
- Event-driven systems: How systems decompose into event producers and consumers
- Stateless design: Scaling implications and architectural patterns
- Loose coupling: Building resilient, independent services
- Compute abstractions: Functions as compute units vs other models
- Applicability analysis: When serverless fits your problem
- Trade-off awareness: When serverless is not the right choice
Learning Path
- Lessons 1–5: Core concepts and mental models
- Lessons 6–7: Applicability and decision frameworks
Target Audience
- Architects and engineers learning serverless for the first time
- People transitioning from traditional monolith or container-based thinking
- Anyone building systems on AWS Lambda or Google Cloud Functions
Prerequisites
- Basic understanding of software architecture and distributed systems
- Familiarity with HTTP APIs and databases
- Willingness to question assumptions about "where code runs"
How This Course Works
Each lesson in this track:
- Starts with core concepts — System thinking and architectural principles
- Explains design patterns — How senior architects approach these problems
- Provides cloud examples — Practical implementations on AWS and Google Cloud
- Includes trade-off analysis — When to use, when to avoid
Let's begin.
Who it's for: Developers and engineers new to serverless who want a structured path from basics to production-ready thinking.
Lessons:
- What Serverless Really Means
- Event-Driven Thinking
- Stateless vs Stateful Systems
- Loose Coupling as a First-Class Goal
- Serverless Compute Concepts
- What Can You Build with Serverless
- When Not to Use Serverless
Duration: 1–2 weeks (self-paced)