791: LLRT The Serverless Runtime w/ Richard Davison

Scott and Wes chat with Richard Davison from AWS about LLRT, a new runtime tailored specifically for Lambda. They dive into the benefits of using LLRT, challenges with JavaScript in serverless, and why Rust was chosen for its development. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:07 Who is Richard Davison? 05:11 What is LLRT and what’s the motivation for building it? 08:25 AWS Lambda example. 11:20 What makes LLRT specifically tailored to Lambda? 14:55 Brought to you by Sentry.io. 15:22 Node.js in Lambda. 16:00 What are some challenges that people have with JavaScript in serverless? 17:20 Lambda memory configuration. 19:23 Managing cost of compute. 21:29 Simpler and faster than Node, Bun, Dino, but not a replacement. 22:31 The benchmarks. 27:00 Quick.js, the main reason for the performance gains. Fabrice Bellard QuickJS. 28:03 The Quick.js engine. 30:35 What was the reason behind creating Quick.js? 33:46 What made you pick Rust for LLRT? 36:34 Abstractions and the value of speed. 39:08 The JIT Compiler. 42:38 Compile cache. 43:27 De-optimizations. 44:59 Node.js Compat, what to use and avoid with LLRT. GitHub AWS Labs Compatibility Chart. 47:52 Will you target with WinterCG spec? 50:22 Streams API. 52:06 What about WebSockets? 53:10 Is this going to be promoted from a labs project? 54:49 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs. Sick Picks Richard: QuickJS Engine, JSLinux. Shameless Plugs Richard: Javascript Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads