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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

#431

Post by ransom1538 »

aljgz wrote: post #49

Years ago, I joined a company, took over a dev team and was asked to launch the product in 3 months. They were using AWS, so I logged in the account to add a few more machines. Right there, in front of my eyes, were the signs of an adversarial, abusive relationship. The UI to fire up a new machine did not show me the price. I had to look up the price in another table that did not have the specs. I had to have the two…

There will be no greater engineering feat than the ability to set a spending cap. FAANG is filled with brilliant people working alongside the smartest AI of our time, yet somehow the ability to set a spending cap has eluded some of the best engineers on the planet for over a decade.

Einstein split the atom. Newton explained gravity. Musk can land rockets backwards on floating platforms in the ocean.

But none of them could answer the ultimate question:

How do I stop AWS from charging me $47k because someone forgot to turn off a Kubernetes cluster?

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

#432

Post by DANmode »

joquarky wrote: post #421
lukan wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the victim had the option to walk, but did not, then it is his fault for not doing that. If I know a dog is dangerous, but try to touch it anyway and get bitten - then yes the evil dog bit me, but it was my fault for not reacting to danger. Same way with a abusive company, if you know they are, but still make a contract because it seems convenient, then it is still a abusive company, but your fault for getting int…

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

#433

Post by bellowsgulch »

Galanwe wrote: post #324

These arguments against AWS are boring. 99% of the negative comments are along the line of "so i have a dead simple product, I dont know anything about AWS, I logged in and it was super complicated and it seemed pricey". Well guess what, if you have a CRUD website and 100 users you're just not the target. Move on. Some days ago I wanted to sketch a 3D model of my TV remote. I opened blender and what a mess of complic…

that's not a great argument: any professional who doesn't know their operating costs is barely a professional

would you be more enamored by roofers who came to your house and couldn't break down your quote because they were too professional to know the cost of asphalt shingles?

is it more sophisticated to you that you go to a fish market and the price of the goods isn't listed and you have to ask the cashier for every catch?

perhaps we should all be artists who walk in to supply stores purchasing oil paints not caring what the tubes costs because you're not the target if you want to know the cost of your materials

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

#434

Post by akvadrako »

Galanwe wrote: post #324

These arguments against AWS are boring. 99% of the negative comments are along the line of "so i have a dead simple product, I dont know anything about AWS, I logged in and it was super complicated and it seemed pricey". Well guess what, if you have a CRUD website and 100 users you're just not the target. Move on. Some days ago I wanted to sketch a 3D model of my TV remote. I opened blender and what a mess of complic…

It's true the comments get it wrong. But their main point stands; they shouldn't use AWS.

It's also true that most companies which AWS does target shouldn't use it either, unless you have a good reason why ( like you need data centers in every continent or to quickly scale to 10+ thousands of cpus ).

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

#435

Post by Capricorn2481 »

nemothekid wrote: post #429
Capricorn2481 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a contractor, so my deployment complexity is whatever my current client's complexity is. > If you just need a VPS provider, there are better, less complex options. I find these complaints kind of like stepping into an F1 car and complaining that the F1 car is deceiving you because theres no fuel gauge That's fine if you feel that way. The article and following discussion is clearly about the smaller audience, and…

AWS is being pushed on everyone the same way Hadoop was pushed on everyone in the 2010s and IBM in the 90s. Everyone sees themselves as webscale, when their data can reasonable fit in Excel. If the only product on AWS you are using in EC2 and S3, you are choosing the wrong tool. The complexity of AWS is because a service like AWS is complex. Neither Azure or GCP has any less complexity. DigitalOcean offers way less s…

> They aren't important in the same way a F1 car doesn't think families are important enough to add a back row seat

I don't know of anyone saying you should buy an F1 car for your family, do you?

I do see people in this very thread with very different ideas of when AWS makes sense for you.

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

#436

Post by recursive-call »

I was in a team that used aws once for their quantum computers. we had $100 of api credits. while still trying to get the code to work, we somehow used all of them, and then it didn’t even alert us that we were out of credits and just spent an additional $100 that we didn’t have. I would not touch this system again with a 10 foot pole…

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

#437

Post by [deleted] »

senko wrote: post #345
Galanwe wrote: post #324

These arguments against AWS are boring. 99% of the negative comments are along the line of "so i have a dead simple product, I dont know anything about AWS, I logged in and it was super complicated and it seemed pricey". Well guess what, if you have a CRUD website and 100 users you're just not the target. Move on. Some days ago I wanted to sketch a 3D model of my TV remote. I opened blender and what a mess of complic…

If you want to design TV remotes, you better learn Blender. If you want to host something complex enough to warrant AWS, you should also understand how to run it yourself. These arguments for AWS are boring and sound like uninspired regurgitation of their sales pitch. I recall hearing the same about IIS and Windows a few decades back. Turns out, they both have pretty good marketing departments!

[deleted]

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

#438

Post by themafia »

> Somewhere in the depths of AWS some sort of security alarm had been triggered probably by the fact that my mostly dormant account suddenly started doing stuff with an expensive computer.

You mean the alarm that shows up with a notification bell in your console? Why not just post that?

> I am dreading having to "request quota" to be allowed to do that.

Why? It works fine. I've done it several times.

> IAM - the hideously complex auth and access rules system - this was invented by Lucifer sitting on his burning throne in the ninth level of Hell as the worst possible torment for those who have been sent below for using AWS.

It's literally a JSON policy document.

> - once I noticed the complexity of IAM I could not unsee the complexity everywhere in AWS.

All our policy actions are scripted at this point. You specify what functions the lambda calls and it builds the policy for you, sends it to IAM, and attaches it to the lambda.

Everytime I see someone complain about AWS I'm left wondering "did you read _any_ of the documentation? If you just want a linux server then run that but if you want out of the hassle of managing one then you need to learn just a _handful_ of new tricks."

If half the effort of complaining about AWS was spent reading documentation then most of these articles would never be published.

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

#439

Post by m463 »

aurareturn wrote: post #157
aljgz wrote: post #49

Years ago, I joined a company, took over a dev team and was asked to launch the product in 3 months. They were using AWS, so I logged in the account to add a few more machines. Right there, in front of my eyes, were the signs of an adversarial, abusive relationship. The UI to fire up a new machine did not show me the price. I had to look up the price in another table that did not have the specs. I had to have the two…

Doesn't Amazon engineering culture have a very engineer-led product culture? Meaning, devs are often responsible for the UX and flow. I remember many years ago we hired a junior developer who just finished his internship at AWS and he showed me the dashboard he shipped all by himself in the summer with no product or designer help. It looked horrible. Some devs have a good product/UX sense but the vast majority are ho…

> Some devs have a good product/UX sense but the vast majority are horrendously bad at UX.

I think the problem is that nobody understands the size of the problem.

For most tasks, the accomplishment is getting something to work. That takes 90% of the time. But the UI requires polish, working things out, backing out and trying again, and takes the OTHER 90% of the time.

I remember talking to a friend who worked with apple to port some dvd authoring software. And steve jobs started with the UI, and said "this is what you do". I think it was just a blank screen and you drag your video onto it. the software they were porting was a bunch of windows type confusing nonsense, and they had big changes to make.

That said, AWS might be a dark pattern. Remember the cable companies that didn't WANT to show the hidden fees? because $29.99 a month was really $71.41?

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

#440

Post by fragmede »

aljgz wrote: post #49

Years ago, I joined a company, took over a dev team and was asked to launch the product in 3 months. They were using AWS, so I logged in the account to add a few more machines. Right there, in front of my eyes, were the signs of an adversarial, abusive relationship. The UI to fire up a new machine did not show me the price. I had to look up the price in another table that did not have the specs. I had to have the two…

> I had to have the two tables open, cross check the specs and price.

Okay but https://ec2instances.info/ is right there. It's valid to point out that you shouldn't have to do that, but sometimes you just have to live with the relationships you have.

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