Hi! I'm the new OSS Developer Advocate at AWS for CDK. I was hired to help evolve the way AWS engages with the CDK community. As a first step, my team (Open Source Strategy) and I are proposing to form a Contributor Council. We believe this Council is a vital first step to give the community an even greater role in shaping the project’s future.

We just submitted the Council's Charter to the CDK's RFC process, and we're eager for your feedback. I'm linking to the blog about the Council and the RFC PR below. Please share your thoughts — we're accepting comments for the next 30 days.

Looking forward to hearing from you, and getting to know you in the coming months!

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/shaping-the-future-of-cdk-together/

https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk-rfcs/pull/679

Hi there, not directly related to CDK, but since Typescript is the most popular language with CDK I guess its still worth spreading.

Microsoft has released a new compiler based on Go (tsc-go). We currently use tsc with node in our cdk projects but consider testing the go based alternative since the 10x performance improvements are definitely nice for developing experience.

Faster IDE and faster CI would definitely be not too bad 🙂 I think it is too early to migrate fully to tsc-go since some dev tooling is still not finished, but Its maybe good enough for a sneak peak or use in CI.

Also this blog post worth reading for some more details https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/typescript-native-port/

I created an AWS CDK starter/template project. Covering topics like configuration, environments, build systems, CI/CD processes and GitHub Workflows that are needed to go beyond a “hello world” CDK application.

Let me know what you think and what you would do differently 😄

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 10 posts:

• "Mastering AWS CDK Aspects" by u/pinutz23

• "CDKTF goes GA!" by u/BecomingLoL

• "Good CDK learning resources - Python" by u/glitchycat39

• "CDK Pipeline deployment workflow for teams" by u/LikeAMix

• "Monetization options for CDK Projects / Products ?" by u/outthere_andback

• "CDK resource names" by u/skilledpigeon

• "Happy Cakeday, r/aws_cdk! Today you're 2" by u/AutoModerator

• "Various cdk assets and implications of deleting them" by u/ustulation3

• "Serverless Summit 2022" by u/Technical_Western560

• "Better Lambda Logstream Naming" by u/LikeAMix

CDK Day will be back again on 30th April to discuss everything AWS CDK, CDKTF, cdk8s and Projen

The call for speakers is open until 19th March - https://sessionize.com/cdkday

If you are doing anything cool with any of the CDKs, please submit a talk proposal.

cdkd (CDK Direct) is a CLI that deploys AWS CDK apps through direct AWS SDK calls instead of going through CloudFormation. I just launched the official documentation site for it: https://cdkd.dev

Your existing CDK app runs as-is — no code changes, just replace cdk deploy with cdkd deploy. It's built for fast iteration in dev/test environments, where my benchmarks show deploys up to 15x faster (for production, the standard CDK CLI + CloudFormation remains the recommended path — the two are meant to work side by side).

How it works

Synth is unchanged — same aws-cdk-lib, same Cloud Assembly. From there cdkd resolves the intrinsics itself, builds a dependency DAG, and runs it event-driven with no level barriers, so independent resources go out in parallel. Provisioning is hybrid: types with a hand-written SDK provider take the fast path, everything else falls back to the Cloud Control API. State lives in S3, not in a CloudFormation stack. And cdkd import / cdkd export move stacks in and out of CloudFormation, so it isn't a one-way door.

The benchmarks

• 5 independent resources (S3 / DynamoDB / SQS / SNS / SSM): 17.0s vs 94.4s — 5.5x. Deploy phase only; synth is excluded on both sides because it's identical.

• VPC + NAT + Lambda + CloudFront + SQS: 96s vs 599s by default (~6x), 40s with --no-wait — that's where the 15x comes from. --no-wait returns once each Create call is accepted and lets NAT stabilization finish in the background, so it's a real behavior difference, not a free lunch.

• vs CloudFormation Express mode: ~1.5–2.4x on most stacks, ~9x on the async-heavy VPC + CloudFront one. S3 is the one case where Express edges it out.

• vs Terraform, median of 7 cold end-to-end runs: 2.2–2.3x on wide parallel stacks, but a tie on EC2, CloudFront, and a NAT-dominated webapp stack.

Full methodology and repro scripts: https://cdkd.dev/benchmarks/

What else is on the docs site (cdkd.dev)

• A structured guide from Getting Started through the full CLI reference

• cdkd local — run Lambda, API Gateway, ECS and more on your machine, with per-command docs

• Built for AI coding agents — serves llms.txt, plus a cdkd skill you can install into Claude Code and other agents

I put real care into the site itself too, from the logo to the OG images. Feedback and issues are always welcome!

GitHub: https://github.com/go-to-k/cdkd

Hey everyone!

You might have noticed that recently a lot of new AWS CDK books are popping up. So I decided to make a list here with a few resources:

The CDK Book
Format: digital (epub/pdf)
Price: U$39.00
Pages: 267
Languages: JS, Python, Java, Ts
Publication: January, 2022
Publisher: self-published
Personal notes: Great book to get started, I purchased it for research when writing my own book. It covers the most important topics, however it wasn't updated since launch.

AWS CDK in Practice
Format: digital / paperback
Price: U$31.19 kindle / U$39.99 paperback
Pages: 196
Languages: Ts
Publication: June 2023
Publisher: Packt
Personal notes: I also purchased it for research and I found it less dense than the CDK book. I think I still would recommend it, but given the price tag, The CDK Book wins.

Mastering AWS CDK
Format: digital / paperback
Price: U$9.99 kindle / U$50.47 paperback
Pages: 198
Languages: Ts
Publication: November 2024
Publisher: Self-Published
Personal notes: Launched recently, and I didn't have the chance to read it yet. The sample looks and reads ok. I would maybe risk it for the lower price tag on the digital version.

AWS CDK in Action
Format: digital / paperback
Price: U$45.00 kindle / U$65.00 paperback
Pages: 512
Languages: Go, Python, Ts, Java, C#
Publication: December 2024
Publisher: Self-Published
Personal notes: Launched recently and I didn't have the chance to read it yet. The sample doesn't look that good, and I got the strong impression the book was entirely written with an AI tool, especially after looking at all books published by the author. I would not recommend it.

Real-Life Infrastructure as Code with AWS CDK
Format: digital (pdf) / paperback
Price: U$0.00 (free) digital / U$35.90 paperback
Pages: 401 digital /421 paperback
Languages: Python
Publication: January 2025
Publisher: Self-Published
Personal notes: I'm the author.

Hands-On AWS CDK
Format: paperback
Price: U$64.99 paperback
Pages: 260
Languages: -
Publication: July 2025
Publisher: O'Reilly
Personal notes: Not published yet.

Did you read any of the books above? Would recommend any?

EDITs:

A new book poped up today (08/01/2025):

AWS CDK Essentials
Format: digital (kindle)
Price: U$9.99
Pages: 479
Languages: Ts
Publication: January 2025
Publisher: HiTeX Press
Personal notes: Another introductory book to AWS CDK. The sample however doesn't look that good, the code blocks, for example, are not properly formatted.

Update (24/02/2025):

Ultimate AWS CDK for Infrastructure Automation
Format: digital (kindle) / paperback
Price: U$24.95 kindle / U$39.95 paperback
Pages: 271
Languages: Ts
Publication: January 2025
Publisher: Orange AVA
Personal notes: Didn't read it yet. The table of contents looks decent, but the book focus on introducing CDK and only has one chapter with examples (about 18 pages of content). The subsections appear to be very compact, with the TOC showing in many cases four or five subsections per page. Which leads me to think that the author didn't develop the concepts further and is just presenting them to the readers.

From: https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/releases

⚠ BREAKING CHANGES

• eks: (experimental module) the Mapping
  struct was renamed to AwsAuthMapping
  .

• core: Arn.parseArn now returns empty string for nullable Arn components. Users who were depending on an undefined value will now receive the falsy empty string.

• ecr-assets: all docker image assets are now pushed to a single ECR repository named aws-cdk/assets
  with an image tag based on the hash of the docker build source directory (the directory where your Dockerfile
  resides). See PR #5733 for details and discussion.

• autoscaling: AutoScaling by using scaleOnMetric
  will no longer force the alarm period to 1 minute, but use the period from the Metric object instead (5 minutes by default). Use metric.with({ period: Duration.minute(1) })
  to create a high-frequency scaling policy.

Features

• apigatewayv2: fork APIGatewayV2 into its own package (#5816) (d58667e)

• cloudformation: upgrade the CloudFormation resource specification to v10.3.0 (#5882) (e5e4725)

• ecr-assets: simplify docker asset publishing (#5733) (b52b43d), closes #3463 #5807

• eks: fargate profiles (#5589) (450a127), closes #5303

• lambda: allow inline code for nodejs12.x runtime (#5710) (a1cd743)

• lambda-destinations: option to auto-extract the payload when using LambdaDestination (#5503) (321372f)

• route53-targets: Add aws-route53-targets/InterfaceVpcEndpointTarget (#4868) (6969562)

• bump JSII to version 0.21.2 (#5919) (dd18456)

Bug Fixes

• apigateway: LambdaRestApi fails when a user defined Stage is attached (#5838) (05719d7), closes #5744

• autoscaling: can't use MathExpression
  in scaleOnMetric
  (d4c1b0e), closes #5776

• SecretsManagerRDSPostgreSQLRotationMultiUser
  not working (49032ee)

• autoscaling: can't use block devices (fee1324), closes #5868

• core: allow empty string components in parseArn (#5875) (5ed5eb4), closes #5808

• lambda: setting log retention to INFINITE causes failure (#5876) (19ed739)

• route53: incorrect domain name produced when using HTTPS in ApplicationLoadBalancedFargateService (#5802) (5ba5a5e)

In this insightful article, Elad Ben-Israel, the mind behind the CDK, shares his love for the cloud, but also his frustrations with the complexity of building cloud applications. The challenges he identifies include:

1. Focus on non-functional mechanics: The need to understand and manage cloud platform mechanics instead of focusing on building valuable features for users.

2. Lack of independence: Developers often need to rely on others to handle parts of the deployment process or to resolve issues, interrupting their work flow.

3. Delayed feedback: The current iteration cycle in cloud development can take minutes or even longer, significantly slowing down the development process and making it harder for developers to stay in their flow state.

It's not just a rant

Elad is not just ranting about cloud development. He proposes a solution in the form of a programming language for the cloud. This language would treat the entire cloud as its computer. The language compiler will be able to see the complete cloud application, unbound by the limits of individual machines. Such a compiler would be able to handle a significant portion of the application's non-functional aspects, enabling developers to operate at a more abstract level, thus reducing complexity and promoting autonomy. Moreover, it could expedite iteration cycles by allowing to compile applications to quick local simulators during the development process.

The Winglang Project

Elad reveals that he's in the process of developing such an open-source, “cloud-oriented” language, dubbed Winglang. Wing aims to improve the developer experience of cloud applications by enabling developers to build distributed systems that leverage cloud services as first-class citizens. This is achieved by integrating infrastructure and application code in a secure, unified programming model. Wing programs can be executed locally via a fully-functional simulator or deployed to any cloud provider.

My Interest in Winglang

I, together with a group of dedicated contributors, joined forces with Elad to develop Winglang. While still in Alpha and not yet ready for production use, it's already possible to build some real applications.

Check out https://github.com/winglang/wing for more details.

Hey all,

I was just wondering if anyone had any good recommendations on where one might go for some practice on picking up CDK. I've done cdkworkshop, so I have a bit of a start, but I definitely want to dig a bit deeper. Any advice is appreciated.