Amazon has no idea how to run an app store • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#101

Post by westernmostcoy » Sun, Jan 10, 2016, 11:00 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #94

goldenkey wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked there as well and recently left, I'm super surprised as well to see them considered with the likes of Google or Facebook, etc. Shitty middle managers are rampant. The engineering culture is defined by Levels..Level 3, 4, 5 etc. Consistency is promoted over quality. Codebases were so horribly not DRY it makes me want to vomit. Unit tests for constants -- unit tests for specific code inside of functions.…

If AWS is so shitty on the inside, why aren't the blogs filled with stories about bugs etc after the enormous amount of use it gets ?

I suspect only EC2/S3 and their paired services (EBS, IAM, etc) gain enough use to qualify as "enormous" and thus receive wide attention for their failings. AWS has a lot of services:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services#List_of_pr...

Putting that aside, I'm not sure "why aren't people complaining?" is a reasonable way to prove or disprove how buggy software is.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#102

Post by goldenkey » Sun, Jan 10, 2016, 11:02 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #78

School-Cotton wrote: post #13

It's really remarkable how much Amazon's reputation has been self-destructing in the last year or so. Even 6 months ago when I told people I thought Amazon was an all-around shitty company (having worked there) and shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as Google, FB, etc., people looked at me like I was insane. Somehow the stock keeps going up... I don't have any material insider info but just on a hunch I doubt…

I think Amazon is just a more chaotic business model. Bezos is a more chaotic person than Brin, Page, or Zuckerberg. He is happy to keep his cards in the air (thus his finance strategy) and push people in destructive ways (thus his business practices). All he needs to know is that when the chips fall, he has a good shot at having something to control. He doesn't even seem to care if that ever happens, happy to spin h…

A huge difference though was that the Jobs bullied for changes to get the iPhone produced.

Bezos on the other hand, made the Fire phone team answer to him (similar to Jobs bullying, without any of the mythical stories..) Yet the product he made them create was a total miss with consumers. As egotistical and deluded people might say Jobs was - he still had to be aligned with the needs of the average person to produce the iPhone, a masterful manifestation of usability principles.

Bezos is chaotic, sure. But more damning, he is out of touch.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#103

Post by rodgerd » Sun, Jan 10, 2016, 11:06 PM UTC

goldenkey wrote: post #72

School-Cotton wrote: post #13

It's really remarkable how much Amazon's reputation has been self-destructing in the last year or so. Even 6 months ago when I told people I thought Amazon was an all-around shitty company (having worked there) and shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as Google, FB, etc., people looked at me like I was insane. Somehow the stock keeps going up... I don't have any material insider info but just on a hunch I doubt…

Having worked there as well and recently left, I'm super surprised as well to see them considered with the likes of Google or Facebook, etc. Shitty middle managers are rampant. The engineering culture is defined by Levels..Level 3, 4, 5 etc. Consistency is promoted over quality. Codebases were so horribly not DRY it makes me want to vomit. Unit tests for constants -- unit tests for specific code inside of functions.…

> Makes me totally re-evaluate AWS after seeing how its built internally.

Customers care about deliverables, not elegance.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#104

Post by goldenkey » Sun, Jan 10, 2016, 11:10 PM UTC

rodgerd wrote: post #103

goldenkey wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked there as well and recently left, I'm super surprised as well to see them considered with the likes of Google or Facebook, etc. Shitty middle managers are rampant. The engineering culture is defined by Levels..Level 3, 4, 5 etc. Consistency is promoted over quality. Codebases were so horribly not DRY it makes me want to vomit. Unit tests for constants -- unit tests for specific code inside of functions.…

> Makes me totally re-evaluate AWS after seeing how its built internally. Customers care about deliverables, not elegance.

I'm pretty sure Atlassian (recently IPOed) proved that to be wrong, especially in the case when your customers are developers.

Besides, bad repetitive code almost always results in bugs. If there were a ten commandments of programming, that would be #1.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#105

Post by lkrubner » Sun, Jan 10, 2016, 11:12 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #74

That title is over the top, so we replaced it with the much more neutral first sentence of the article.

I am sorry to say this contributes to the feeling that the HN rule about titles is entirely arbitrary. Most of the time the rule seems stupidly rigid and inflexible. After all, why can't developers highlight the aspect of the article that would be of most interest to the readership of HN? But then, suddenly, an exception is made, based on wholly subjective criteria. How do you define "over the top"? Have you tried to get an Alexa app certified? Do you understand how bad the situation is?

I'm in favor of flexibility regarding the titles, and if HN supported such flexibility, then your decision in this case would seem less arbitrary. But given the rigidness applied at other times, this seems like an odd exception.

I'll point out that the current title does not come close to expressing the level of frustration that developers are currently feeling regarding the Alexa app store. Shouldn't the title give some indication about the real conflict?

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#106

Post by MaulingMonkey » Sun, Jan 10, 2016, 11:28 PM UTC

bananaboy wrote: post #89

dahart wrote: post #69

Apple's review process also sometimes felt arbitrary, especially early on, and there's been a long list of complaints over the years that sound just like these. I used to work in games, and the approvals for Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft were all super, ridiculously frustrating at times. We had experiences very much along the same lines of failing again for doing the very thing they asked of us in the previous reject…

My experience in games has been the opposite. As opposed to Apple and Amazon, the console certification requirements are set in stone. The documents are very clear about what you have to do.

The requirements are generally much better documented for consoles. But some of the requirements can still be subjective. Edge cases still pop up as well, and the requirements can change over time (especially early in the console cycle when everything is still getting ironed out - nevermind when switching between console generations.)

Even ignoring the edge cases and subjective items, they can be extremely picky about such important things as... leaderboard username terminology. Which will not necessarily be the same across all storefronts from a given company, even if they're all using the same service under the hood.

And then the moment you step into the territory of needing waivers for anything - better hope your publisher has a good relationship to secure those.

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#107

Post by woah » Sun, Jan 10, 2016, 11:30 PM UTC

DDub wrote: post #79

SilasX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that doesn't refute the parent's point: since the content at a URL is inherently mutable, they could judge that (at time of submission) some app is the type of content they want in their ecosystem, and then seconds after approval, it no longer is.

It could be that the client device validates a checksum against the approved list at the store before installing? Haven't tested if this is the case, just spitballing a mechanism that would allow for the control without the hosting.

https://github.com/substack/hyperboot

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#108

Post by dgemm » Sun, Jan 10, 2016, 11:32 PM UTC

goldenkey wrote: post #72

School-Cotton wrote: post #13

It's really remarkable how much Amazon's reputation has been self-destructing in the last year or so. Even 6 months ago when I told people I thought Amazon was an all-around shitty company (having worked there) and shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath as Google, FB, etc., people looked at me like I was insane. Somehow the stock keeps going up... I don't have any material insider info but just on a hunch I doubt…

Having worked there as well and recently left, I'm super surprised as well to see them considered with the likes of Google or Facebook, etc. Shitty middle managers are rampant. The engineering culture is defined by Levels..Level 3, 4, 5 etc. Consistency is promoted over quality. Codebases were so horribly not DRY it makes me want to vomit. Unit tests for constants -- unit tests for specific code inside of functions.…

Why should anyone care about consistency in how AWS is put together?

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#109

Post by woah » Sun, Jan 10, 2016, 11:38 PM UTC

melted wrote: post #42

No one has any idea how to run an App Store. Even Apple's App Store is vastly inadequate to sell the gigantic number of apps available on it. Top N apps make out like bandits, everyone else is basically dying. It will always be power law, but IMO the tail could extend quite a bit further than it does today.

The App Store is not there to serve developers

Re: Amazon has no idea how to run an app store

#110

Post by megablast » Sun, Jan 10, 2016, 11:42 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #3

This is perhaps the key bit of silliness: "And this is where we run into the first bit of craziness. Amazon decided that they should model the Alexa app store after the iPhone app store. So there is a certification process to get your app into the store. But think about the difference: you are not uploading a binary file to the Alexa app store, you are simply registering an URL. So Amazon has no real control over you…

Yes they could. They could have a daily check to see if the content at your URL has changed.

Also, you can similarly get around the iPhone cert process buy only having certain code run after a certain date, or when you trigger something remotely.