Amazon Web Services in Plain English • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Web Services in Plain English

#51

Post by kevinbowman » Fri, Sep 11, 2015, 11:10 AM UTC

madeofpalk wrote: post #50

stephenr wrote: post #32

Let me preface this by saying I use AWS only when clients insist on it. I think there are much better options that don't lock their customers in anywhere near to the same level. I think AWS has plenty of badly named services, but some of these suggestions are much worse worse (and have a huge American influence - that fascination with using brand/implementation names for a generic/standard item) than the current actu…

> * Amazon Memcached - I don't used the service so I don't know if it's only binary compatible with memcached but if its a generic cache that has multiple interfaces (the page references redis too) then more generic term like cache (and elastic implies it can grow/expand) seems more logical. Considering all AWS ElastiCache is is "hosted Redis", that one confused me the most. Out of all the AWS services, this is the l…

From memory, when you create an ElastiCache cluster, you have to choose whether it's memcache or redis. It's really just a very thin wrapper around them running EC2 instances in your VPC which are running either memcache or redis.

Re: Amazon Web Services in Plain English

#52

Post by benihana » Fri, Sep 11, 2015, 11:11 AM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #32

Let me preface this by saying I use AWS only when clients insist on it. I think there are much better options that don't lock their customers in anywhere near to the same level. I think AWS has plenty of badly named services, but some of these suggestions are much worse worse (and have a huge American influence - that fascination with using brand/implementation names for a generic/standard item) than the current actu…

So, if I understand this right, you're getting really really worked up at a slightly tongue-in-cheek post that tries to explain AWS in a way that's relateable to a lot of programmers. And you're upset because the words used in this post, which is about explaining Amazon's services to people who are familiar with similar services, wouldn't be a wise choice for Amazon to actually use, since it's too familiar with their competition?

That seems silly, and kind of missing the entire point of this submission. I haven't used any of Amazon's services, so having something to translate back to things I can understand was really helpful, and I feel like I have a much better idea of what Amazon offers.

Re: Amazon Web Services in Plain English

#53

Post by ins0 » Fri, Sep 11, 2015, 11:16 AM UTC

benihana wrote: post #52

stephenr wrote: post #32

Let me preface this by saying I use AWS only when clients insist on it. I think there are much better options that don't lock their customers in anywhere near to the same level. I think AWS has plenty of badly named services, but some of these suggestions are much worse worse (and have a huge American influence - that fascination with using brand/implementation names for a generic/standard item) than the current actu…

So, if I understand this right, you're getting really really worked up at a slightly tongue-in-cheek post that tries to explain AWS in a way that's relateable to a lot of programmers. And you're upset because the words used in this post, which is about explaining Amazon's services to people who are familiar with similar services, wouldn't be a wise choice for Amazon to actually use, since it's too familiar with their…

Exactly what i was thinking about as i submited this. Don't read this article as a "They should rename the Services to..." and more like "This name would explain the Service in a simpler form". Thanks for reading my mind btw :)

Re: Amazon Web Services in Plain English

#54

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Fri, Sep 11, 2015, 11:23 AM UTC

timclark wrote: post #9

"It's like: Stacking cash on the sidewalk and lighting it on fire" Is an accurate description of a large number of products that I have been forced to use after various CTOs have played golf with a vendors sales team.

I've found that nearly any use-case of AWS is like "stacking cash on the sidewalk and lighting it on fire". It's very overpriced and there's a lot of smoke and mirrors involved in figuring out how much you're paying.

Disclaimer: I work at Linode, but have felt this way since before I started.

Re: Amazon Web Services in Plain English

#55

Post by kevindeasis » Fri, Sep 11, 2015, 11:33 AM UTC

It took me forever to understand what each services aim to do. Like I could have literally been a better programmer by spending all the time learning algorithms instead of figuring out what each of the aws services do. I wish I've had access to this post before.

I like the services they offer, I just really hate the names they gave it. Funny enough, Jeff Bezos said in an interview that names of a product is important #irony

Re: Amazon Web Services in Plain English

#56

Post by Handwash » Fri, Sep 11, 2015, 11:36 AM UTC

martiuk wrote: post #49

stephenr wrote: post #32

Let me preface this by saying I use AWS only when clients insist on it. I think there are much better options that don't lock their customers in anywhere near to the same level. I think AWS has plenty of badly named services, but some of these suggestions are much worse worse (and have a huge American influence - that fascination with using brand/implementation names for a generic/standard item) than the current actu…

What would you suggest as an alternative to AWS?

AWS is quite okay, I think, and useful. They even named their free training day as AWSome Day.

Re: Amazon Web Services in Plain English

#57

Post by mcherm » Fri, Sep 11, 2015, 11:37 AM UTC

This guide is surprisingly helpful. Oh, but Glacier (not a bad name, actually) should be "Amazon Storage for Backups".

Re: Amazon Web Services in Plain English

#58

Post by gldalmaso » Fri, Sep 11, 2015, 11:42 AM UTC

stephenr wrote: post #32

Let me preface this by saying I use AWS only when clients insist on it. I think there are much better options that don't lock their customers in anywhere near to the same level. I think AWS has plenty of badly named services, but some of these suggestions are much worse worse (and have a huge American influence - that fascination with using brand/implementation names for a generic/standard item) than the current actu…

to add: * Amazon Unlimited FTP Server: you can't really interact with S3 using a ftp client

Re: Amazon Web Services in Plain English

#59

Post by jonkiddy » Fri, Sep 11, 2015, 11:42 AM UTC

jlebar wrote: post #19

I have to say that I think "glacier" is an inspired name. It takes a negative -- slow data retrieval -- and turns it into a positive -- indestructible, huge, unstoppable.

I completely agree. It is a great name for the service.

"There are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors." ~ Jeff Atwood

Re: Amazon Web Services in Plain English

#60

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Sep 11, 2015, 11:44 AM UTC

eva1984 wrote: post #31

hueving wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix had to go through a massive engineering effort to make their system reliable enough to work on AWS. If they knew what it would take in human and capital investment, they may have chosen to build their own datacenter.

Really? I thought they shutdown their last home-made datacenter just recently. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/netfli...

[deleted]