| AWS is fine as long as... you do not want to control it with shell scripts and without a large scripting language. (No Perl, Python, Ruby, Go, etc.) I tried this when I first experimented with AWS after I read the story behind it, i.e., the directive Bezos allegedly gave to disparate groups within Amazon to make their data stores accessible to each other. The AWS documentation claimed everything could be controlled via HTTP. Great. I know HTTP. Sign me up. I have no trouble interacting with servers via HTTP using the Bourne shell and UNIX utilities, without using large scripting languages. I have been doing so for many years. But after a few hours trying to get AWS to work using UNIX it was such a PITA I gave up. And I do not give up easily. But it turned out there were small errors in the documentation, so even if one followed their specification to the letter, things still would not work. The Amazon developers in the help forums would just say use the Java programs they had written. Of course AMZN had a "web interface" from Day 1. But I have little interest in another hosting company with a web GUI. At the time all Amazon offered for anyone interested in the command line was Java. Installing OpenJDK and a hefty set of "Java command line tools" just to send HTTP requests? This did not inspire confidence. Then came Python. Everyone loves AWS. How can anyone criticize it? I concluded that if AWS was well-designed (according to Bezos alleged directive) then it would be possible to interact with it without having to use a large scripting language and various libraries. I guess I am either too stupid or I set the bar too high. AWS, as I understood it back then (before the massive growth), is a wonderful idea but I am not sure the implementation was/is as wonderful as the idea. |