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Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

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Re: Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

#81

Post by eplanit »

adambatkin wrote: post #8

IAM "Should have been called Users, Keys and Certs" That's funny. Because we have hundreds of developers using AWS every day, using IAM all the time, and never using a single IAM User. IAM is actually named extremely well. identity and Access Management. I can't think of a better name. And if your problem is that you just don't like acronyms, you probably picked the wrong industry.

IAM has been in use, without any confusion that I've encountered amongst various clients, for well over 10 years. How is it confusing? It sounds like people are wanting dumbed-down "Romper Room" names. Meaningful acronyms serve as mnemonics as to what the thing is. Noobs should learn and embrace.

Re: Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

#82

Post by syshum »

dylan604 wrote: post #50
chrsig wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can certainly agree that some of those descriptions don't fully encompass what you're getting. Some of your points are more picking at the authors choice of simplifying language, rather than the effort to simplify the names themselves. Some of the names are completely uninformative though -- cognito for example doesn't convey anything about oauth. Neptune doesn't make me think graph database. Kinesis doesn't make m…

>Some of the names are completely uninformative though Does Microsoft make you think computer OS? Does Apple make you think of computers and personal devices? Do common names Alexa/Siri mean anything specific to you? None of the words used in those examples have anything to do with what they do, but they are now synonymous with everything you think of when those words are spoken/written. That's because the companies…

>Does Microsoft make you think computer OS?

No, because it is Company not an OS. And today I bet more people associate Microsoft with Xbox, or Office then with Windows. Windows has been Microsoft's least profitable division for awhile now. The OS is their loss leader

> Does Apple make you think of computers and personal devices?

No, Apple makes me think of Cringe Hippies over spending on an poorly engineered fashion statement... ;) Or prime example of a company claiming to be environmentally friendly while actively designing their products to have to be thrown away instead of repaired...

>AMZN through AWS has just come up with names so that they can be discussed more easily.

I dont think that is true at all, even in tech circles trying to remember what the different service names are is pain.

Amazon AWS took a look at Microsoft, the worse company in the world at naming things, and said "Hold my beer"

>>However, is anyone reading this really not aware of what S3 does? EC2?

S3, probably not but it is also the oldest product and has become Standard Standard Cloud based Object Storage, S3 while an AWS service is also a protocol adopted by countless other services, and open source projects.

EC2, Yes I better there are those that do not know what EC2 is, or that to use EC2 you need EBS. And the deeper you go the more complex the web of services become.

Re: Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

#83

Post by tommek4077 »

chrisan wrote: post #68
tommek4077 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you seem to have no clue whats beneath your shiny, expensive cloud gui.

If you think a VPC is simply a co-located rack... well, sorry but it isn't. Also, since every single AWS service requires a rack, I assume you also want to put Rack in every single name?

Well lets see what did we have in a rack? Router, Switch, Servers... And there you have your VPC.

Re: Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

#84

Post by naveen99 »

lentil wrote: post #76
naveen99 wrote: post #75

Does aws have anything analogous to Microsoft’s azure free tier where you have some free quota monthly ? https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/free-account-faq/

Yep: https://aws.amazon.com/free

Thank you ! I am going to try it out.

Re: Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

#85

Post by jrockway »

Google seems to have adopted the simpler naming scheme ("Cloud Storage", "Cloud SQL", etc.) and it honestly doesn't help much. Imagine you have some application that can write to various providers' object storage implementation. The user has to configure that somehow, and what do you call the configuration keys? In the AWS case, it's easy -- "S3_BUCKET". With Google, you end up having to use an incredibly long name. "STORAGE_BUCKET" -- too general. "CLOUD_STORAGE_BUCKET" -- too general (there are many clouds). "GOOGLE_CLOUD_STORAGE_BUCKET" -- there you go. Type that in all caps without a typo. (It's unclear to me whether or not "GCS" is an acceptable acronym for Cloud Storage. I think I use "GCS_BUCKET", but I'm also pretty sure I just made that up.)

Google's acronyms also just all blend together for me. GCP has GKE which uses GCE instances. The entropy is not high enough for me to parse that unless I pronounce every word that the letter is standing in for. Meanwhile, "AWS has EKS which uses EC2 instances". More entropy, more comprehensible.

I don't think any of this really matters much, but I also don't think that being generic and simple is necessarily the end game.

Re: Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

#86

Post by mikl »

Traster wrote: post #5

Some of these are clearly deliberate obfuscation. I need something to handle Queues, what should I use? Amazon SQS obviously. Oh cool, what’s that? It’s a Queue service! Oh great, why is called SQS? Simple Queue Service duh! Is there a more complex queuing service? No. There’s only SQS. The acronym is totally useless, tells you nothing beyond it being for Queues and completely obfuscates what’s happening for anyone n…

> Is there a more complex queuing service? No. There’s only SQS.

Yes there is: https://aws.amazon.com/amazon-mq/

Re: Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

#87

Post by fomine3 »

adambatkin wrote: post #8

IAM "Should have been called Users, Keys and Certs" That's funny. Because we have hundreds of developers using AWS every day, using IAM all the time, and never using a single IAM User. IAM is actually named extremely well. identity and Access Management. I can't think of a better name. And if your problem is that you just don't like acronyms, you probably picked the wrong industry.

Agreed, IAM is exceptionally great name.

Re: Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

#88

Post by fomine3 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #33

The problem I have with these renamed is that by "simplifying" the name, they often cut out major pieces of functionality. The original names are at least "brandable" so that when I think of that name, I think of the entire suite of functionality. Some examples: 1. IAM -> Users, Keys and Certs. But other commenters have already pointed out this leaves out the whole roles, permissioning and policies that is really the…

Just curious why Amazon combines push messaging service and pub/sub service to SNS.

Re: Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

#89

Post by hypertele-Xii »

dylan604 wrote: post #77
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Microsoft is almost literally microprocessor software. Sounds pretty descriptive to me.

I had intended to add Windows to that, but my brain-to-typing-fingers skipped over it. The word "Windows" tells me nothing about what it does in the "same contenxt" as what's being discussed here. We've just had that crap shoved down our gullets for all this time it has become synonymous with software operating system not because the word is descriptive of purpose.

Disagree on that too, the concept of movable "windows" into programs is quite descriptive also. What else would you call it? Programmable Rectangles? Subscreens?

Re: Amazon Web Services In Plain English (2019)

#90

Post by chrisan »

tommek4077 wrote: post #83
chrisan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think a VPC is simply a co-located rack... well, sorry but it isn't. Also, since every single AWS service requires a rack, I assume you also want to put Rack in every single name?

Well lets see what did we have in a rack? Router, Switch, Servers... And there you have your VPC.

If only a VPC was all contained in a single rack you might have a point.

But alas, we use the term "cloud" for a reason in the modern world of development

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