Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#1

Post by hopefullywrong » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 4:15 PM UTC

I’m a dev with 10 years of experience, I’ve mostly used aws services in the past so I kind of understand their authentication models pretty well. I feel like they did the customer centric thing and really dumbed them down. They’re just pretty straightforward to use.

Permissions in GCP seem like a mess, I’m trying to use python to get credentials and there is a whole python library for authentication and getting credentials (google-auth).

There’s also not a uniform page for every service where I can go understand authentication/permissions.

They do have a ton of docs, but it’s kind like a document dump.

Sorry for the rant! I want to know if it’s just me and whether I’m missing something!

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#2

Post by PaulHoule » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 4:18 PM UTC

I think so. The system for authenticating to GCP is an order of magnitude more complex than that for AWS.

I think Google has a culture of "we hire the best and brightest so we can afford to squander 70% of their IQ with unnecessarily complexity" which contrasts to, say, Facebook wanting new hires being able to commit a change and get it into production on the first day.

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#3

Post by chewz » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

I think so. The system for authenticating to GCP is an order of magnitude more complex than that for AWS. I think Google has a culture of "we hire the best and brightest so we can afford to squander 70% of their IQ with unnecessarily complexity" which contrasts to, say, Facebook wanting new hires being able to commit a change and get it into production on the first day.

Well said... All this total IQ at Google is much, much less then sum of parts...

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#4

Post by Mo3 » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:19 PM UTC

Yeah. It’s also harder to speak to a human, exponentially so

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#5

Post by f0e4c2f7 » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

> 10 years of experience, I’ve mostly used aws services in the past so I kind of understand their authentication models pretty well.

I think it's mostly this. IAM in AWS isn't exactly a walk in the park, especially when you start getting into granting only explicitly needed permissions. There aren't great systems for doing that (that I know). Lots of stuff that half works and you sort of have to know how to glue the rest together yourself.

I think GCP's permissions are essentially the same way but GCP is also less popular. So you have even less tooling and documentation.

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#6

Post by s_m » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:24 PM UTC

I find GCP to be easier to use, but that's just me. If you're already productive with AWS I don't think there's much point in trying to get ramped up on Google's PaaS

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#7

Post by zbjornson » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:37 PM UTC

I feel the opposite. Everything I've used in GCP, I've understood and appreciated the design decisions behind. Most things I've used in AWS, I've wondered why they shipped it that way. Examples:

* High-availability HSM KMS: trivial in GCP, super difficult in AWS.

* Object storage (GCS/S3): multi-region is trivial in GCP, somewhat harder in AWS. Archival is so much simpler in GCS than S3 Glacier.

* IAM: makes sense to me in GCP and is consistent across products, AWS policy editor has poor usability and feels inconsistent between products.

* Having per-region pages in the AWS console is a pain, easy to lose stuff. GCP is one global interface.

* Cloud functions/Lambda: CF Just Work with native dependencies. Lambda is painful in that regard.

GCP's auth lib is confusing though, I agree with you there. We stopped using it and all of their client libs a few years ago and wrote our own. However, that they force you to use service accounts is an excellent security decision.

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#8

Post by serverlessmom » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

> Permissions in GCP seem like a mess, I’m trying to use python to get credentials and there is a whole python library for authentication and getting credentials (google-auth).

I feel you, but I gotta agree with the other commenters that it's really just about time and experience. Anyone long-experienced on one public cloud will really struggle switching clouds. Your experience is low but your expectations are high. You're not just poking into a dashboard trying to spin up a single VM, you want to do all the stuff you're used to doing on AWS.

While IAM does feel easy once you know it, as someone who's run hackathons and bootcamps I can say it's not easy for everyone to just pick up. It's as complicated as it needs to be, but yeah it can be a steep learning curve.

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#9

Post by more_corn » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

Yes

Re: Ask HN: Is GCP harder to use than AWS?

#10

Post by newuser94303 » Thu, Mar 03, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

I have used both. GCP is designed to cover all the edge conditions on security. AWS can do that but it is much easier to shoot yourself in the foot with AWS security. That is why you get all the stories about people leaving their S3 buckets open.