Yesterday, I discovered the <Kotlin/Native Runtime...

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[Stefan Oltmann]

Yesterday, I discovered the Kotlin/Native Runtime for AWS Lambda by Viacheslav Ivanovichev and decided to give it a try.

I ended up creating a fully Kotlin/Native version of my Smart Home Alexa Skill:
https://github.com/stefanoltmann/smart-home-alexaskill-native

And what can I say? I'm genuinely impressed.

With the Java-based Lambda, processing a voice command like “_Alexa, turn off the bedroom lights_” typically took 3–5 seconds when cold (and 500 ms when warm). I always considered that normal and just lived with it for years.

Now, with the Kotlin/Native version, from a cold start it takes just 350 ms to process the command — and when warm it is down to 130 ms.

That's just awesome. 🙂

[Oliver.O]

@bashor

[darkmoon_uk]

Thanks for reporting @Stefan Oltmann, this is great to know. I'm about to start developing my first Kotlin Lambdas this week so this has prompted me to keep a Native target on the go to keep the option open 👌

[Frank Bouwens]

Awesome! Thanks for sharing the results of your experiment 😄

[Stefan Oltmann]

You're welcome 🙂

It's been working really well so far — I'm now running it in production instead of the Java version.

There was one instance where a cold start took 1800 ms, which I don't quite understand. Still, that's significantly better than what the Java version used to take, and it only happened once. Maybe I should try the newer Linux environment (Amazon Linux 2023), but I understood it needs additional setup and I wasn't in the mood for that so far. 😄