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I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

fourlightyears.blogspot.com

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Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#51

Post by joefourier »

tiffanyh wrote: post #9
joefourier wrote: post #4

> Cloud computing was an absolutely mind blowing revolution - suddenly your startup could run its own computer systems in minutes without need to install and run your own systems in a data center. This was an absolute game changer, and I really drank the AWS Kool Aid down to every last drop then I licked out the cup. I was all in on AWS in a big way. Am I the only one who remembers that VPSes and dedicated hosting se…

> suddenly your startup could run its own computer systems in minutes without need to install and run your own systems in a data center. The “in minutes” is doing a lot of the work in that sentence above. I also used dedicated servers in the late ’90s (and they still offer great value today). But before AWS, provisioning new hardware typically took days , not minutes. AWS changed that, and the rest of the industry ev…

> I also used dedicated servers in the late ’90s (and they still offer great value today). But before AWS, provisioning new hardware typically took days, not minutes.

VPSes and non-custom configs for dedicated servers were pretty instant as far as I know, I think the advantage of AWS was more that you could scale up and down much more easily since you weren’t locked down in a monthly contract, and that you could automate server provisioning through an API.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#52

Post by trashburger »

cpursley wrote: post #20
ChrisBland wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss heroku dearly. somewhere at Salesforce there is an exec who killed the product and shifted it to enterprise and is now looking at the vibe coding revolution seeing their opportunity missed.

Fly and Render are what heroku would be if they didn’t stop innovating. And neon db for Postgres.

> And neon db for Postgres.

For 90% of the time when they're up.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#53

Post by kriz9 »

faangguyindia wrote: post #8

Why do people even bother with cloud? I’ve a couple of apps doing a few million a day. I am using Hetzner and before that used DigitalOcean. Mind you, for close to a decade. People are unnecessarily complicating stuff, and these clouds can go very expensive very quickly. Recently, I came across a company and they were spending $20k a month on GCP. I am like, are you kidding me, $20K for the kind of stuff you do??? It…

The ease of getting things set up quickly and usually for free when starting up is very tempting. Later, migration is usually considered risky and not worth it because of maintenance overhead - which I would argue has become very easy.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#54

Post by dzonga »

the A.I (LLM) merchants will tell you - that AI is now writing software (agentic coding they call it ) - yet one they can't bill you properly or have a broken billing mechanism.

their dashboards are trash & don't work - Google Cloud, AWS Console, Google Ads, Meta Ad manager

I won't even mention the hyped up LLM vendors.

but here we r - people being laid off due to A.I - money being funneled into Gigawatt datacenters

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#55

Post by xmcp123 »

maccard wrote: post #41
faangguyindia wrote: post #8

Why do people even bother with cloud? I’ve a couple of apps doing a few million a day. I am using Hetzner and before that used DigitalOcean. Mind you, for close to a decade. People are unnecessarily complicating stuff, and these clouds can go very expensive very quickly. Recently, I came across a company and they were spending $20k a month on GCP. I am like, are you kidding me, $20K for the kind of stuff you do??? It…

At my previous startup: because AWS gave us a bunch of credits and helped us design the infra. It meant we ran for free what they designed for free. At a previous bigger company, getting procurement to sign up to a new provider requires writing a business case, justifying the spend and then getting multiple competing quotes and speaking to their sales teams. Signing up to a new service takes _months_ even for $10/mo…

Have seen this repeatedly also.

Watched one company end up with a $250k AWS bill when their credits expired (which they could not pay).

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#56

Post by ipaddr »

rpdillon wrote: post #50
hankerapp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of these projects work on a business model where they open-source their core product, and provide advanced services, installation, maintenance or fully-managed services around their product. AWS was bypassing them by providing fully-managed services. On this, I am on the side of the people behind the projects. Basically AWS was eating their lunch. They had no choice but to change the licenses.

They have a problem with their business model, then. License changes to a formerly open source project are costly. The community reacts very strongly when license terms change after they've come to depend on a product, and they should. Why do we apply this standard to MongoDB but not to Apache, Linux, Postgres, or MariaDB? One purpose of an open source license is to allow many providers to provide the service. As I'v…

Competition would mean Amazon creating their own software. Taking software others made and using your monopoly eco-system and scale to drive the original creator out of the game kills the product.

Many support breaking up Amazon so others could compete not killing small entities and growing Amazon.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#57

Post by rglover »

andrewstuart wrote: post #27
andai wrote: post #3

At last my quest to find the stooge has come to a bitter end! I saw some 192 core instances on Vultr, but I haven't tried them yet. What are you doing with all them cores? I often fantasized about spinning up hundreds of nodes for various projects that needed number crunching. Then realized "wait I can just rent one big box for an hour" haha. It's really cool that we can do that now.

>> 192 cores What are you doing with all them cores? The ancient forgotten art of Vertical Scaling.

It's remarkably zen and effective.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#58

Post by cyanydeez »

rpdillon wrote: post #50
hankerapp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of these projects work on a business model where they open-source their core product, and provide advanced services, installation, maintenance or fully-managed services around their product. AWS was bypassing them by providing fully-managed services. On this, I am on the side of the people behind the projects. Basically AWS was eating their lunch. They had no choice but to change the licenses.

They have a problem with their business model, then. License changes to a formerly open source project are costly. The community reacts very strongly when license terms change after they've come to depend on a product, and they should. Why do we apply this standard to MongoDB but not to Apache, Linux, Postgres, or MariaDB? One purpose of an open source license is to allow many providers to provide the service. As I'v…

Walmart pulling up top a small town, opening a single business, paying everyone minimum wage is not 'competition is good'.

Just try a little bit of understanding.

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#59

Post by ipaddr »

maccard wrote: post #31
ChrisBland wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss heroku dearly. somewhere at Salesforce there is an exec who killed the product and shifted it to enterprise and is now looking at the vibe coding revolution seeing their opportunity missed.

Digital ocean is the answer. You give it a container and off you go.

Use to be now they are requiring 2fa for addon domains over a certain amount

Re: I returned to AWS and was reminded why I left

#60

Post by rglover »

joefourier wrote: post #4

> Cloud computing was an absolutely mind blowing revolution - suddenly your startup could run its own computer systems in minutes without need to install and run your own systems in a data center. This was an absolute game changer, and I really drank the AWS Kool Aid down to every last drop then I licked out the cup. I was all in on AWS in a big way. Am I the only one who remembers that VPSes and dedicated hosting se…

Not first, but it was the first with a planet-scale marketing budget.

I miss the Media Temple days.

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