Libaws: A simpler way to declare AWS infrastructure
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Re: Libaws: A simpler way to declare AWS infrastructure
#2Why should it be?
is Linux easy? Is Windows?
AWS (as is GCP and Azure) can basically be thought of as an entire operating system, with extremely low level concepts (VPCs, EC2 machines), mid-level (Lambda, StepFunctions, EventBridge), and high-level (Translate, Comprehend, Rekognition, etc)
I am not sure if this library helps. It presents its own opinionated flavour of AWS but doesn't really hide enough of the details.
If you want to use AWS and not think of underlying infra like networks and security groups, build on high-level services like EventBridge and StepFunctions.
Alternatively, if you don't want to think about services at all, use CDK constructs: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/v2/guide/constructs.html
For example, ehre is a NetworkLoadBalancedFargateService: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/v1/docs/@aws-cdk_aws-ecs...
Re: Libaws: A simpler way to declare AWS infrastructure
#3Why should it be? is Linux easy? Is Windows? AWS (as is GCP and Azure) can basically be thought of as an entire operating system, with extremely low level concepts (VPCs, EC2 machines), mid-level (Lambda, StepFunctions, EventBridge), and high-level (Translate, Comprehend, Rekognition, etc) I am not sure if this library helps. It presents its own opinionated flavour of AWS but doesn't really hide enough of the details…
> Why should it be?
There exists a cohort of internal customers at medium-to-large sized software companies that need to ship new applications without being bogged down by the decisions of how to get that thing running and playing nicely with the rest of the ecosystem. For the same reason they don't give their end users CRUD APIs to use their products, it doesn't always make sense to give our developers the entire suite of AWS and say "figure it out".
There's need here but I'm not sure we've figured out what the right answer is.
Re: Libaws: A simpler way to declare AWS infrastructure
#4Why should it be? is Linux easy? Is Windows? AWS (as is GCP and Azure) can basically be thought of as an entire operating system, with extremely low level concepts (VPCs, EC2 machines), mid-level (Lambda, StepFunctions, EventBridge), and high-level (Translate, Comprehend, Rekognition, etc) I am not sure if this library helps. It presents its own opinionated flavour of AWS but doesn't really hide enough of the details…
> Why should it be? There exists a cohort of internal customers at medium-to-large sized software companies that need to ship new applications without being bogged down by the decisions of how to get that thing running and playing nicely with the rest of the ecosystem. For the same reason they don't give their end users CRUD APIs to use their products, it doesn't always make sense to give our developers the entire su…
as an indie dev who is NOT a DevOps person i'd love more tooling that enabled me to configure AWS and have good safe defaults preset for me. Right now you really need to be a pro or spend a lot of time learning the nitty gritty configuration stuff of services you need but don't actually care about.
Re: Libaws: A simpler way to declare AWS infrastructure
#5Why should it be? is Linux easy? Is Windows? AWS (as is GCP and Azure) can basically be thought of as an entire operating system, with extremely low level concepts (VPCs, EC2 machines), mid-level (Lambda, StepFunctions, EventBridge), and high-level (Translate, Comprehend, Rekognition, etc) I am not sure if this library helps. It presents its own opinionated flavour of AWS but doesn't really hide enough of the details…
> Why should it be? There exists a cohort of internal customers at medium-to-large sized software companies that need to ship new applications without being bogged down by the decisions of how to get that thing running and playing nicely with the rest of the ecosystem. For the same reason they don't give their end users CRUD APIs to use their products, it doesn't always make sense to give our developers the entire su…
That was sort of the idea with the various PaaS implementations out there. But invariably they either go complicated (basically transitioning to a Kubernetes-based container platform). Or they were missing some capabilities, making them less interesting to enterprises in particular.
Re: Libaws: A simpler way to declare AWS infrastructure
#6Why should it be? is Linux easy? Is Windows? AWS (as is GCP and Azure) can basically be thought of as an entire operating system, with extremely low level concepts (VPCs, EC2 machines), mid-level (Lambda, StepFunctions, EventBridge), and high-level (Translate, Comprehend, Rekognition, etc) I am not sure if this library helps. It presents its own opinionated flavour of AWS but doesn't really hide enough of the details…
100% agreed
"Piloting a passenger plane should be easy"
"Performing brain surgery should be easy"
None of that should be easy. AWS is not meant to be focused on ease of use in the first place. It offers brutal power to those who know how to operate it and brutal ways to fuck up if you don’t.
The shipping of applications mentioned by the comment in this thread is not a valid statement either.. there are countless services by now attempting exactly this (Firebase e.g), yet, demanding that AWS or GCP should be child's play to use shows a complete disregard for what they actually offer.. I feel like this is similar to saying "we want to build a spacecraft to transport satellites into space, but we'd love to just have two buttons to start and land the rocket"
And then, even if you manage to abstract everything away to just those two buttons, someone will press it in the wrong moment and the rocket hits a plane flying above and you realize the expertise required is always required and someone who has this expertise doesn't need all of the abstraction in the first place.
Re: Libaws: A simpler way to declare AWS infrastructure
#7Why should it be? is Linux easy? Is Windows? AWS (as is GCP and Azure) can basically be thought of as an entire operating system, with extremely low level concepts (VPCs, EC2 machines), mid-level (Lambda, StepFunctions, EventBridge), and high-level (Translate, Comprehend, Rekognition, etc) I am not sure if this library helps. It presents its own opinionated flavour of AWS but doesn't really hide enough of the details…
> Why should it be? There exists a cohort of internal customers at medium-to-large sized software companies that need to ship new applications without being bogged down by the decisions of how to get that thing running and playing nicely with the rest of the ecosystem. For the same reason they don't give their end users CRUD APIs to use their products, it doesn't always make sense to give our developers the entire su…
> a cohort of internal customers at medium-to-large sized software companies that need to ship new applications without being bogged down by the decisions
Well, if it's a medium-to-large sized company they will be bogged down by governance processes anyway. Who approves the budget for this? Who signs off the cybersecurity and data protection compliance policies?
Re: Libaws: A simpler way to declare AWS infrastructure
#8Why should it be? is Linux easy? Is Windows? AWS (as is GCP and Azure) can basically be thought of as an entire operating system, with extremely low level concepts (VPCs, EC2 machines), mid-level (Lambda, StepFunctions, EventBridge), and high-level (Translate, Comprehend, Rekognition, etc) I am not sure if this library helps. It presents its own opinionated flavour of AWS but doesn't really hide enough of the details…
My anecdotal evidence is developers struggle big time to deploy simple stuff to AWS. "Easy things should be easy" isn't part of their philosophy.
Not complaining thought, I make good money understanding AWS so others don't need to.
> Why should it be?
Because if they don't focus on developer experience, they might end up being treated as a commodity. Eventually someone will eat their lunch.
Re: Libaws: A simpler way to declare AWS infrastructure
#9IMO, this is seeing everything as a nail when you're a hammer.
AWS provides extreme flexibility. This really only becomes valuable once you hit a scale that you can optimize your infrastructure around the shape of your needs.
* Need some heavy workload to run in the most cost effective data center at the most cost effective time. Yep, AWS is great for that.
* Need a specialized GPU set. Yep, AWS is great for that.
* Need some crazy storage or memory setup. Yep, AWS is great for that.
For everything else, you should really consider using a PaaS with a good ol' Docker container.
Re: Libaws: A simpler way to declare AWS infrastructure
#10Why should it be? is Linux easy? Is Windows? AWS (as is GCP and Azure) can basically be thought of as an entire operating system, with extremely low level concepts (VPCs, EC2 machines), mid-level (Lambda, StepFunctions, EventBridge), and high-level (Translate, Comprehend, Rekognition, etc) I am not sure if this library helps. It presents its own opinionated flavour of AWS but doesn't really hide enough of the details…
> Why should it be? There exists a cohort of internal customers at medium-to-large sized software companies that need to ship new applications without being bogged down by the decisions of how to get that thing running and playing nicely with the rest of the ecosystem. For the same reason they don't give their end users CRUD APIs to use their products, it doesn't always make sense to give our developers the entire su…
At my old job, SecDevOps built a metric fuckton of monitoring of all AWS accounts in the Organizations, as well as some pretty complex pipelines that checked the typs of infrastructure being built.
Everything built in AWS was done with Terraform (minus some bootstrapping of accounts and orgs). Custom terraform modules were built which were guardrails of underlying raw Terraform providers.
I'm not saying it's ideal, I'm just throwing it out there.