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The Amazon Builders' Library

aws.amazon.com

21–30 of 52 posts

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#21
Lists don't make such great HN posts, because the discussion inevitably becomes about the lowest common denominator of the items on the list. The interesting material is in the specific items on the list, but these never escape the gravitational pull of the generic topics (in this case Amazon and AWS). It's usually better to pick the most interesting thing on the list and submit that instead.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#22

Disclaimer: ex-AWS Wowzer. Amazon, and in particular AWS, sits on a treasure trove of hard-earned lessons abt designing, building, operating, maintaining systems at scale. I'm glad they have began to share some of that know-how with the external world. I wrote abt longing for AWS to do this some 6 months back [0] as I dearly missed access to those docs and videos that helped me understand so much abt the underpinning…

why do you keep typing 'abt' instead of 'about'? what are you planning to do with all the time saved?

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#23
post #6

Wow. I haven’t gone through most of the content but shuffle sharding not only is a great idea but their write up is quite clear: https://aws.amazon.com/builders-library/workload-isolation-u... Impressive stuff!

Yes, that's a great one. But now I have a brain teaser stuck in my head: Imagine you have a multi-tenant system like they describe, but for each customer A, B, C they have users A1, A2, A3, B1 etc.

You need ordered delivery of messages, but only at user level (if all messages needed to be ordered you could not do this sharding type setup). Is there a way to apply shuffle sharding while maintaining user-level ordering guarantees?

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#24

Disclaimer: ex-AWS Wowzer. Amazon, and in particular AWS, sits on a treasure trove of hard-earned lessons abt designing, building, operating, maintaining systems at scale. I'm glad they have began to share some of that know-how with the external world. I wrote abt longing for AWS to do this some 6 months back [0] as I dearly missed access to those docs and videos that helped me understand so much abt the underpinning…

why do you keep typing 'abt' instead of 'about'? what are you planning to do with all the time saved?

Isn't abt [0] a generally accepted abbrv for about [1]?

[0] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/abt-?s=t

[1] https://www.abbreviations.com/ABT

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#26
post #9

Does anyone know why Amazon engineers always seem to write so well? Any time I read technical content from Amazon, I am struck by how clear and concise it is.

Amazon really emphasizes hiring and developing writing ability. I’m convinced it’s a major reason they’ve been so successful. (I worked there 2006-2016)

Can you talk at all about what they do to develop writing skill?

> I'm convinced it's a major reason they've been so successful.

I'd be interested to hear why you think this.

One guess I've got is that a high standard for writing is a filter for bad ideas - if you can't justify your idea in a tight, well-written document, then it's probably not worth trying out.

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#27
post #21

Lists don't make such great HN posts, because the discussion inevitably becomes about the lowest common denominator of the items on the list. The interesting material is in the specific items on the list, but these never escape the gravitational pull of the generic topics (in this case Amazon and AWS). It's usually better to pick the most interesting thing on the list and submit that instead. https://hn.algolia.com/?…

Normally I would agree with you, but the existence of the library was the most significant announcement of today's re:invent keynote. So the existence of the list, and the fact that the list will keep growing, is the news here.

One option might be to change the URL on this submission to the blog post about the list instead:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/check-out-the-amazon-builde...

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you keep typing 'abt' instead of 'about'? what are you planning to do with all the time saved?

Isn't abt [0] a generally accepted abbrv for about [1]? [0] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/abt-?s=t [1] https://www.abbreviations.com/ABT

It's understandable, but very rare in most text. It's the sort of thing you'd expect in a telegram, not a modern forum comment.

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#29
post #27
post #21

Lists don't make such great HN posts, because the discussion inevitably becomes about the lowest common denominator of the items on the list. The interesting material is in the specific items on the list, but these never escape the gravitational pull of the generic topics (in this case Amazon and AWS). It's usually better to pick the most interesting thing on the list and submit that instead. https://hn.algolia.com/?…

Normally I would agree with you, but the existence of the library was the most significant announcement of today's re:invent keynote. So the existence of the list, and the fact that the list will keep growing, is the news here. One option might be to change the URL on this submission to the blog post about the list instead: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/check-out-the-amazon-builde...

That's a fair point. Thanks for the correction!

Re: The Amazon Builders' Library

#30

Disclaimer: ex-AWS Wowzer. Amazon, and in particular AWS, sits on a treasure trove of hard-earned lessons abt designing, building, operating, maintaining systems at scale. I'm glad they have began to share some of that know-how with the external world. I wrote abt longing for AWS to do this some 6 months back [0] as I dearly missed access to those docs and videos that helped me understand so much abt the underpinning…

why do you keep typing 'abt' instead of 'about'? what are you planning to do with all the time saved?

> what are you planning to do with all the time saved?

This made me laugh hilariously.

But overall the parent was a very helpful comment, to get this perspective from an ex-Amazon-er

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