[tomc1985]

For light usage I would beg to differ

I'll never forget getting told off by the S3 PM at Reinvent because I had the nerve to ask for global sort in the S3 file browser. "Do it yourself!" he said... like, I need to find one file, sorted by date, about once every other month. You want me to learn the CLI and write a custom script for THAT?! Un-effing-believable

They have a bajillion highly-paid programmers (and enough infra to power God himself) and yet one basic feature present pretty much elsewhere in both the online and offline worlds is too much to ask

[scarface74]

S3 is one of the last things I would manage from any GUI. I don’t use GUIs when I’m searching or listing local files either.

Besides the S3 cli commands are some of the most intuitive.

S3 is not a file system though and is a big blob of objects with tags. I think the worse thing AWS ever did was present S3 as a file system in the web console.

[shats]

You probably got told off because S3 isn't a file store. Asking for such a feature displays great ignorance about what the S3 service actually is.

[scarface74]

How would that even work on the API level efficiency given how S3 is architected? It’s clear given their optimization techniques they tell you to use that S3 is optimized for prefix style searching. That’s all they offer from the web console, the cli or the SDKs.

It would amount to retrieving everything from the S3 conceptual “index database” and doing a non optimized sort when everything is architected to search based on the key and a key prefix.

It’s far more efficient to let the client get a subset by prefix (ie “folder”) and sort/filter by other meta data client side.

[tomc1985]

The web console doesn't even do global prefix searching

Why bother giving me a file browser if I'm supposedly not supposed to be browsing files?

[Kephael]

Build an index of your S3 bucket with DynamoDB.

[JackFr]

It was a dumb ask. You got told off because your question indicated you hadn't even glanced at documentation.

[tomc1985]

Giving users an interface and then expecting them not to use it seems a little... idunno.... sanctimonious?

Like if you don't want me using something, don't give it to me. Users gonna use

Seriously though that attitude is antithetical to the spirit of computer nerditry. Who do they think they are telling me what I can and cannot use?

[scarface74]

Computer nerdery is not doing things in the GUI. It’s using the provider API for your language of choice and building your own tools.

[tomc1985]

That's one school of thought. Many of us grew up on mac and windows and appreciate good, power-user friendly GUI design

[scarface74]

And honestly (not directed at you) that’s a problem endemic with “AWS consultants”. Too many of them are old school netops people who took one certification learned how to click around in the console and now call themselves “AWS Architects”.

They end up duplicating their on prem architecture and processes - costing companies more and not knowing how to automate and increase efficiency.

As far as “powerful GUIs”, one of the earliest game changers for the Mac that helped Apple survive during the dark ages were all of the custom workflows that publishers had created using AppleScript. It wasn’t the better GUI back in the day.