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If you know those tools exist, maybe. I just put together a new project using cloudformation (technically serverless, but it turned into 90 percent cloudformati

by dvlsg 9y ago

If you know those tools exist, maybe. I just put together a new project using cloudformation (technically serverless, but it turned into 90 percent cloudformation syntax anyways), and it was pretty rough.

eropple 9y ago
Maybe it's just me, but as a programmer the first thing I ever asked when looking at the wall of CloudFormation JSON was "so how do we make this not suck?". Our job is not just to automate servers, it's to automate processes, including stupid developer-facing ones.
- andrewstuart2 9y ago
  You're not wrong. But in my case, that had been basically forbidden as an option, essentially because it "wasn't supported by Amazon," and because there's just additional risk to non-standard approaches. AWS certifications cover CloudFormation, so you can hire for that with low risk pretty easily. Other nonstandard utilities, not so much.
- jrochkind1 9y ago
  True, but as a _programmer_, working on a _new to me platform or package_, I am _very_ reluctant to add an extra third-party abstraction layer which requires it's own evaluation of quality and stability and some learning curve. It's gotta be pretty clear to me that it really is "what everyone else is doing", or I've gotta get more experience with the underlying thing to be able to judge for myself better. I've definitely been burned many times by adding an extra tool or layer meant to make things easier, that ends up not, for all manner of reasons. I think we all have.
  - wgjordan 9y ago
    Worth noting that "nearly 31,000 AWS CloudFormation stacks were created for Prime Day" [1], so Amazon uses CloudFormation heavily internally. Not a guarantee that it's what 'everyone else is doing', but it's a good indicator of quality/stability and that it will remain a core service within the AWS ecosystem for some time. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/prime-day-2017-powered-by-aws/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/prime-day-2017-powered-by-a...
    - hayd 9y ago
      I think they're talking about a CF template generator being the third-party software (I could be wrong).
- mr_toad 9y ago
  Cloudformation templates can be written in YAML now, which is a lot less sucky than writing JSON by hand.

by dvlsg 9y ago

eropple 9y ago

Maybe it's just me, but as a programmer the first thing I ever asked when looking at the wall of CloudFormation JSON was "so how do we make this not suck?". Our job is not just to automate servers, it's to automate processes, including stupid developer-facing ones.

andrewstuart2 9y ago
You're not wrong. But in my case, that had been basically forbidden as an option, essentially because it "wasn't supported by Amazon," and because there's just additional risk to non-standard approaches. AWS certifications cover CloudFormation, so you can hire for that with low risk pretty easily. Other nonstandard utilities, not so much.
jrochkind1 9y ago
True, but as a _programmer_, working on a _new to me platform or package_, I am _very_ reluctant to add an extra third-party abstraction layer which requires it's own evaluation of quality and stability and some learning curve. It's gotta be pretty clear to me that it really is "what everyone else is doing", or I've gotta get more experience with the underlying thing to be able to judge for myself better. I've definitely been burned many times by adding an extra tool or layer meant to make things easier, that ends up not, for all manner of reasons. I think we all have.
- wgjordan 9y ago
  Worth noting that "nearly 31,000 AWS CloudFormation stacks were created for Prime Day" [1], so Amazon uses CloudFormation heavily internally. Not a guarantee that it's what 'everyone else is doing', but it's a good indicator of quality/stability and that it will remain a core service within the AWS ecosystem for some time. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/prime-day-2017-powered-by-aws/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/prime-day-2017-powered-by-a...
  - hayd 9y ago
    I think they're talking about a CF template generator being the third-party software (I could be wrong).
mr_toad 9y ago
Cloudformation templates can be written in YAML now, which is a lot less sucky than writing JSON by hand.