Troubles with the AWS web console • Hacker News Board

Re: Troubles with the AWS web console

#141

Post by jayd16 » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 4:39 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #65

adreamingsoul wrote: post #44

These comments are fascinating to me. I was responsible for designing, leading, and building the frontend for an AWS service. One of the challenges was with obtaining useful feedback from a diverse range of people. During the product definition phase, the majority of the feedback, input, and feature priority was for customers who were planning to dedicate a large budget towards using said service. I often felt that s…

Noting your verb tense, “I was”, I’m assuming you’re no longer in that role. This isn’t feedback, just discussion. I talked to Jassy after his keynote in 2018: “Your message says AWS is for ‘builders’. Why do you keep saying ‘just click and ...’ instead of ‘just call the API and’?” In short, to your point: AWS is for builders... who pay. And right now all the growth is in enterprise, where we don’t know how to make A…

Google's cloud put a CLI in the web console. Its hilariously ironic but it solves for this, I suppose.

Re: Troubles with the AWS web console

#142

Post by doliveira » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 4:44 PM UTC

kristianpaul wrote: post #79

KaiserPro wrote: post #78

I know many people will disagree, but I really miss the VMware fat windows client. (vsphere 5, before they ruined it with the weird flash hybrid that didn't work properly) That, was a paragon of design reliability and speed compared to the AWS console. What annoys me the most is the sheer weight of each page. If you have to context change, its multiple seconds before the page is useable. A classic example is lambda.…

You know that nothing stops you from using aws apis and making you own UI right?

Yeah because AWS is free and we don't have any right to complain.

Re: Troubles with the AWS web console

#143

Post by taude » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

camtarn wrote: post #121

nkozyra wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't expect those services to offer you much more personal attention, honestly.

Amazon does have vendor and seller managers who are allocated to specific vendors/sellers. I'm surprised that for a $2.4M/year AWS customer (presumably with the highest support level) that they wouldn't have a similar setup. That said, having personal attention from a manager is definitely not the same as getting features actually built for you.

I agree, at 2.4M/year, i'm surprised you don't get more. we spend about 150k/month on Azure services, and it seems like we get a lot more service and roadmap influence....

Re: Troubles with the AWS web console

#144

Post by meddlepal » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #87

redhale wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is exactly inverse to yours. IMO Azure's documentation, in general, is far superior to AWS's. And my experience with Azure support has been stellar.

Azure’s documentation is plentiful , which is good, but it’s also confusing (the same topic might be covered in different ways among two pages, some of it will likely be obsolete because last week the interface changed again, etc...) which is bad. Knowledge management is hard.

> some of it will likely be obsolete because last week the interface changed again, etc...) which is bad.

One of the problems with the Azure documentation is that the API endpoints are versioned (?api-version=yyyy-mm-dd) but the documentation doesn't make it easy to find the relevant version or see the differences between versions.

The interfaces don't change if you pin to a version.

I've been deep diving on Azure for awhile (and have worked extensively with AWS and GCP in the past) and in general I find both Amazon and Azure's docs to have the plentiful but confusing problem. Google's documentation is slightly different... I can never seem to find what I'm looking for but when I do it's comprehensive and complete, but then I can't find it again the next time I need it.

The big pain point with Azure is wrapping your head around Active Directory and AD IAM if you come from a non-AD world. I still vastly prefer Amazon's IAM system to Azure's (Google's is just a confusing mess and needs to be redesigned.)

Re: Troubles with the AWS web console

#145

Post by lukev » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

cloakandswagger wrote: post #113

Terretta wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noting your verb tense, “I was”, I’m assuming you’re no longer in that role. This isn’t feedback, just discussion. I talked to Jassy after his keynote in 2018: “Your message says AWS is for ‘builders’. Why do you keep saying ‘just click and ...’ instead of ‘just call the API and’?” In short, to your point: AWS is for builders... who pay. And right now all the growth is in enterprise, where we don’t know how to make A…

Most AWS services' console/API are 1-1. Occasionally a console might offer some convenience features which are just a combination of API calls, but I'm not aware of any service that has functionality solely offered in the console. As the original comment touched on, this would be really unusual in AWS where most attention goes to the APIs/SDKs which are what larger customers use.

There are definitely some API-only things. Mostly edge cases. For example, last week I ran into the fact that it's only possible to associate a Route 53 Hosted Zone with a VPC from a different account via the API.

Re: Troubles with the AWS web console

#146

Post by nickthemagicman » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

There seems to be a huge need for a boto3/django(or something) user interface that you could run locally to interface with AWS.

Re: Troubles with the AWS web console

#147

Post by meddlepal » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

makebelieve wrote: post #103

m0xte wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me that isn't the problem. It's mapping the several-thousand acronym riddled hairballs into reality. The reality matches no other reality which means the knowledge is probably useless in 20 years time, much as the knowledge I had of proprietary stuff then is useless now. My head has only a certain amount of space and motivation for ephemeral complexity hairballs like AWS. At this point I have to wonder if this is…

I second this. I found it easier to spin up servers on other services and run big install scripts than to try do decode Amazon's naming/acronym hell. The requirement to connect invented names to computational activity is big overhead. I guess each AWS service get's named it's own thing as it is developed and those names just stick forever. it is maddening. Reading the docs outloud often sounds like a weird technical…

> I've never looked at Azure, but since Microsoft has been the king of making up their own names for things, I expect it to be just as bad.

I use Azure and the naming is pretty straightforward. It's entirely unlike Amazon in that regard and also very unlike classic Microsoft.

Re: Troubles with the AWS web console

#148

Post by lukev » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

I don't find the console that frustrating, or when it is, I understand why. UIs are hard.

What I do find frustrating is how much of the docs are written in a console-first way. In most cases, the straightforward definitions of resources, attributes and the relationships between them are tucked away (or not present at all) in favor of "click this, then click that" style.

I am convinced that the best way to understand a cloud service is to understand its internal data model and semantics, but this is too often hidden behind procedural instructions.

Re: Troubles with the AWS web console

#149

Post by oldmanhorton » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 5:01 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #141

Terretta wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noting your verb tense, “I was”, I’m assuming you’re no longer in that role. This isn’t feedback, just discussion. I talked to Jassy after his keynote in 2018: “Your message says AWS is for ‘builders’. Why do you keep saying ‘just click and ...’ instead of ‘just call the API and’?” In short, to your point: AWS is for builders... who pay. And right now all the growth is in enterprise, where we don’t know how to make A…

Google's cloud put a CLI in the web console. Its hilariously ironic but it solves for this, I suppose.

As did Azure, quite some time ago. Many docs articles say go to the azure portal and open the web console to continue this set of instructions

Re: Troubles with the AWS web console

#150

Post by pests » Sat, Sep 07, 2019, 5:03 PM UTC

lukev wrote: post #145

cloakandswagger wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most AWS services' console/API are 1-1. Occasionally a console might offer some convenience features which are just a combination of API calls, but I'm not aware of any service that has functionality solely offered in the console. As the original comment touched on, this would be really unusual in AWS where most attention goes to the APIs/SDKs which are what larger customers use.

There are definitely some API-only things. Mostly edge cases. For example, last week I ran into the fact that it's only possible to associate a Route 53 Hosted Zone with a VPC from a different account via the API.

Your parent comment is stating the reverse. That there is no web console only features.