Viva Re:Invent

Las Vegas 2025

You should go to Re:Invent. That’s the simple message I’d heard over and over again. Odelay. I have served as Subject Matter Expert for Amazon Web Services for the last three years, contributing to Associate and Professional Certification Level exams. At every workshop – I’ve been to Seattle, Tempe, Arlington and Nashville – someone would inevitably tell me – “You should go to Re:Invent”. My response was usually… “Odelay”. I had my doubts and trepidations – first of all – Re:Invent is held in Las Vegas.

I had never been to Vegas, I actually don’t like to gamble. But the kitschy-ness of it, the Elvis-ness of it – drew me in. Other factors pulled me to Re:Invent – one definitely being the sea change in the programming industry with the rapid adoption of Generative AI. Like a good drum break, we have a few moments now to assess the landscape before Generative AI becomes the norm rather than the exception. Secondly, I made it into the AWS Community Builders program this year, and I had a relatively affordable deal for a weeks stay. Forget FOMO, I didn’t want to be known a Loser.

Job Skill mutations are common in the programming profession, and almost always in favor of abstraction. Programming languages are evolving closer and closer towards spoken language. Natural Language processing and spec-driven development are two of the new weapons. Kiro is the newest agentic-AI driven development IDE (integrated development environment). With Kiro you refine a “spec”, a specification, while kiro uses generative AI to complete a design plan, task list and implementation. These phases of development, typically involved meeting with “shareholders”, story-point and backlog grooming are becoming less and less useful as the wild west era of the web wraps up. We don’t need the advice from Business leaders on how to implement a slide carousel anymore, there are thousands to pick from. Javascript is now the byte code of the internet. Programming is moving closer towards Natural Language.

Kiro, Vibe-coding, Strands, Generative AI, Raptors FT challenge.

I decided to take a few days off from the Vegas strip and headed east across the Mojave Desert to the Grand Canyon. Not an easy drive especially when you’re tired and hungover in a rental car. I got there at 8pm at night, it was was snowing. The next morning, I took the bus around the rim of the canyon, but the trails were mostly closed. When you look across the Grand Canyon, I’ll tell you what …. it’s something. You realize that humans are only a small part of this planet we call ‘Earth’. I met up with my high school Buddy, Henry, whom I had not seen in 20 years. He had just gotten married. He has, not to my surprise – four dogs, three trucks and two houses now. We had a steak dinner at the El Tovar Lodge. Unfortunately, the Grand Canyon village was closing down for the winter due to a break in the water supply.

Returning across the desert in a Honda with no name, I had time to think: about my dad and our many adventurous road trips, to the Rockies, the Gulf of Mexico, Astroworld (on and on)… I stopped at a Dairy Queen on Route 66, and a combination Dunkin Donuts / foodmart. There was a giant tourbus with looked like a middle school wrestling team parked outside.

I got back around midday in stiff traffic in the Vegas strip, and made it to my hotel for the last night – The Flamingo. The Flamingo is a holdover from the bratpack era. My room had wacky luxuries like view of the Strip, a motorized blackout curtain and a semi-functional jacuzzi. I made it over the Re:Invent Showroom and saw a certifications lecture by my fellow SME Satabdi. Then to my shocking surprise the evening’s headliner was announced: BECK!

Beck might be closest incarnation of Elvis and was perfect for the stage at the Sahara Casino. He played none of his recent melancholy music – sticking to the raucous “Midnight Vultures” album. Beck can dance. He came out in a Sammy Davis Jr – era tuxedo and dipped into his Jackie Willson splits, insane falsetto of “Debra” and collapsing onstage several times from exhaustion like James Brown on the TAMI Show.

And that was that, I left Vegas wiser, more experienced and ready to apply what I learned.