libaws

cloud is so good now it’s hard to justify not doing something bespoke. ec2 spot is insanely cheaper than turnkey cicd, and better in almost every way. i’m delighted to pay 30% over infra cost for convenience, but not 500%. and it better actually be convenient, not just have a good landing page and sales team. this month i learned localzones have even better spot prices. losangeles-1 is half the spot price of us-west-2. for a runner, do something like this, but react to an http call instead of a s3 put[1]. for a web ui do something like this[2]. s3, lambda, and ec2 spot are a perfect fit for cicd and a lot more. 1. https://github.com/nathants/libaws/tree/91b1c27fc947e067ed46... 2. https://github.com/nathants/aws-exec/tree/e68769126b5aae0e35...

too much maybe? yelling at clouds just feels so good sometimes. apologies. i do actually wish we could have nice things. this is how aws became easy and fun for me[1]. a similar interface could exist for any provider. heroku is right about picking the good parts and exposing only that as an interface. 1. https://github.com/nathants/libaws

like linux, cloud is a lot to learn, but worth it. it adds capabilities you didn’t have before. like linux, cloud is best kept simple, or it can become brittle and confusing. like linux, cloud has a lot of cool things, think zfs, that should be appreciated but not used. like linux, using go makes your life easier. the aws go sdk is the documentation. like linux, you have to learn a lot and then find the core utility you actually care about. for me it is: https://github.com/nathants/libaws like linux, cloud is very stable. focus on core utility. would it be better if cloud wasn't the massive union of all customers needs with a bias toward large customers? sure. the good news is some subset of those needs are actually core utility, well implemented, and stable.

the core of aws is actually pretty good. it’s just wrapped in several layers of nutshells which aren’t needed except by the equally thick enterprise. aws is also inescapably imperative. it’s how the api and everything behind the scenes work. aws is gonna have a lot of nonsense best practices, both 1st and 3rd party, that you have to aggressively ignore. if you can come to peace with these three truths, aws is great. i use it like this: https://github.com/nathants/libaws for those trying to improve, the best aws docs are currently the go sdk and gopls.

the good new is, for the 95% of projects that can tolerate it, aws the good parts are actually both simple and easy[1]. it’s hard to find things you can’t build on s3, dynamo, lambda, and ec2. if either compliance or a 5% project demand it, complicated solutions should be explored. 1. https://github.com/nathants/libaws

i also wanted a good cli for aws, and built one: https://github.com/nathants/libaws companies like fly are fantastic. they provide a good service, and they put market pressure on aws. a free tier isn’t important anymore. with usage based pricing for lambda/dynamo/s3, an app with usage approaching zero has no cost.

cool transition and fun writeup! for low, intermittent traffic sites, go on lambda might be a better comparison: https://github.com/nathants/libaws/tree/master/examples/simp...

lambda + s3. add ec2 spot if you need it. just make sure you understand how billing works. mostly it’s just egress bandwidth expensive, alarms and monitoring good. also 2fa is non optional. do something like this: https://github.com/nathants/aws-gocljs or with less opinions: https://github.com/nathants/libaws/tree/master/examples/simp... welcome to cloud, glhf!

aws ux for retaining both hair and sanity. https://github.com/nathants/libaws