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I thought the AWS console was bad but the Azure console takes the cake. The whole thing is full of weird terms and workflows. For example, I tried setting up a

by pier25 6y ago

I thought the AWS console was bad but the Azure console takes the cake. The whole thing is full of weird terms and workflows. For example, I tried setting up a simple static site with CDN and abandoned frustrated after a couple of retries. IMO Google has the best cloud dashboard of the three big ones. You don't need to read a book or take a course to understand what's going on.

thelazydogsback 6y ago
Yes, as a developer I prefer to work in Azure over the others, so I wouldn't say it's an unimportant issue. Maybe there are more greenfield and small devs. going to Azure, and more mature/ported solutions that just scale in containers and need raw CPU/network on AWS/GCP?
jaywalk 6y ago
It's funny that you mention setting up a static site with CDN on Azure, because I just did that for the first time about an hour ago. After a couple initial hiccups related to not selecting the proper Storage Account type, the rest of the process was a breeze. What part did you get stuck on?
- pier25 6y ago
  Sorry, I don't remember the details. I was making a benchmark of static hosts and wanted to include Azure but simply desisted. I had no problem setting it up on any other provider.
thelazydogsback 6y ago
GCP is pretty easy for simple stuff -- I had good luck just w/Firebase for auth and simple back-end. The Azure learning curve seems to be steady, while AWS at least to me has more (initial and subsequent) hurtles to overcome.
- kerng 6y ago
  DigitalOcean is even easier- the reason for GCP appearing to be simpler is because they only have a fraction of offerings and features. But I find GCP confusing, and like Azure Portal much better - maybe because I have used it longer.
  - thelazydogsback 6y ago
    Of course, the Azure portal can be a beast as well -- if you're the impatient, fast context-switching kind of person that doesn't like to design their dashboard up-front, I can see that it may be frustrating for some.
programmertote 6y ago
I don't use AWS, so I cannot compare. But I've been using Azure for ~2 years and have no problem doing what I need to do there. Surely, they can make the portal and UI more consistent (e.g., Azure Data Factory and Azure DevOps does not seem to reside in the same UI theme as the other Azure resources such as Logic App or Blob). Again, this is just my experience and I am sure for anyone who just started using it, Azure portal can be overwhelming and confusing to use.
- philistine 6y ago
  I'm not a software developer, but I set up two static sites in a so-called serverless fashion on AWS using only their products (Here's one of them, just as a shameless plug: gameboyessentials.com). They are reasonably consistent with their nomenclature and their error messages, but I definetely felt I was using a jackhammer to put screws in drywall. The amount of settings and types of setups per product is staggering. You definetly need to read a how-to to figure out what to do. You cannot figure it out on your own. In terms of UI, the fact that every separate product uses a different view model is bonkers. I understand that letting each product reflect its own functionnality is important, but a list of checkboxes should not have three different ways to display them across three different products (Route 53, S3, CloudFront). Oh and those naming schemes, jeez. Who thought Route 53 was a good idea?
  - pier25 6y ago
    > but I definetely felt I was using a jackhammer to put screws in drywall That's a great metaphor to describe this. :)
sigstoat 6y ago
> I thought the AWS console was bad but the Azure console takes the cake. at the start of quarantine, the azure console was just dying on me regularly. we couldn't get the instances we needed, and apparently neither could the service running the console.
acdha 6y ago
I mostly wish Google would have of their web performance evangelists meet with the GCP team. It has some nice features but it's so slow with all of the background network activity (no progress indicators, naturally) and all of that JavaScript revs up my CPU fans more often than my compiler.
- pier25 6y ago
  I agree it's kinda slow. Not 100% sure but I think it's an old AngularJS project.
  - acdha 6y ago
    It's definitely Angular and doesn't appear to have been optimized much: it needs ~16MB simply to load the console and they really need to think about how represent network activity since most of the views make dozens of API calls and are either blank or display a spinner until most of them complete. They definitely know about it — every time I've used it with someone from Google in the room they've apologized — but it's one of those things which I think their management doesn't prioritize because they either don't use it much or only do so over very fast network connections.
increaseyouriq 6y ago
Setting up a CDN on any cloud provider takes less than a minute and if you have any issues with it, then your IQ is probably way below 80.
meddlepal 6y ago
I have the exact opposite experience... I can't stand the GCP console... especially the networking UI's I'll take either AWS or Azure's console any day... though really I spend most of my life trying to avoid the console and just automating somehow.

by pier25 6y ago

thelazydogsback 6y ago

Yes, as a developer I prefer to work in Azure over the others, so I wouldn't say it's an unimportant issue. Maybe there are more greenfield and small devs. going to Azure, and more mature/ported solutions that just scale in containers and need raw CPU/network on AWS/GCP?

jaywalk 6y ago

It's funny that you mention setting up a static site with CDN on Azure, because I just did that for the first time about an hour ago. After a couple initial hiccups related to not selecting the proper Storage Account type, the rest of the process was a breeze. What part did you get stuck on?

pier25 6y ago
Sorry, I don't remember the details. I was making a benchmark of static hosts and wanted to include Azure but simply desisted. I had no problem setting it up on any other provider.

thelazydogsback 6y ago

GCP is pretty easy for simple stuff -- I had good luck just w/Firebase for auth and simple back-end. The Azure learning curve seems to be steady, while AWS at least to me has more (initial and subsequent) hurtles to overcome.

kerng 6y ago
DigitalOcean is even easier- the reason for GCP appearing to be simpler is because they only have a fraction of offerings and features. But I find GCP confusing, and like Azure Portal much better - maybe because I have used it longer.
- thelazydogsback 6y ago
  Of course, the Azure portal can be a beast as well -- if you're the impatient, fast context-switching kind of person that doesn't like to design their dashboard up-front, I can see that it may be frustrating for some.

programmertote 6y ago

I don't use AWS, so I cannot compare. But I've been using Azure for ~2 years and have no problem doing what I need to do there. Surely, they can make the portal and UI more consistent (e.g., Azure Data Factory and Azure DevOps does not seem to reside in the same UI theme as the other Azure resources such as Logic App or Blob). Again, this is just my experience and I am sure for anyone who just started using it, Azure portal can be overwhelming and confusing to use.

philistine 6y ago
I'm not a software developer, but I set up two static sites in a so-called serverless fashion on AWS using only their products (Here's one of them, just as a shameless plug: gameboyessentials.com). They are reasonably consistent with their nomenclature and their error messages, but I definetely felt I was using a jackhammer to put screws in drywall. The amount of settings and types of setups per product is staggering. You definetly need to read a how-to to figure out what to do. You cannot figure it out on your own. In terms of UI, the fact that every separate product uses a different view model is bonkers. I understand that letting each product reflect its own functionnality is important, but a list of checkboxes should not have three different ways to display them across three different products (Route 53, S3, CloudFront). Oh and those naming schemes, jeez. Who thought Route 53 was a good idea?
- pier25 6y ago
  > but I definetely felt I was using a jackhammer to put screws in drywall That's a great metaphor to describe this. :)

sigstoat 6y ago

> I thought the AWS console was bad but the Azure console takes the cake. at the start of quarantine, the azure console was just dying on me regularly. we couldn't get the instances we needed, and apparently neither could the service running the console.

acdha 6y ago

I mostly wish Google would have of their web performance evangelists meet with the GCP team. It has some nice features but it's so slow with all of the background network activity (no progress indicators, naturally) and all of that JavaScript revs up my CPU fans more often than my compiler.

pier25 6y ago
I agree it's kinda slow. Not 100% sure but I think it's an old AngularJS project.
- acdha 6y ago
  It's definitely Angular and doesn't appear to have been optimized much: it needs ~16MB simply to load the console and they really need to think about how represent network activity since most of the views make dozens of API calls and are either blank or display a spinner until most of them complete. They definitely know about it — every time I've used it with someone from Google in the room they've apologized — but it's one of those things which I think their management doesn't prioritize because they either don't use it much or only do so over very fast network connections.

increaseyouriq 6y ago

Setting up a CDN on any cloud provider takes less than a minute and if you have any issues with it, then your IQ is probably way below 80.

meddlepal 6y ago

I have the exact opposite experience... I can't stand the GCP console... especially the networking UI's I'll take either AWS or Azure's console any day... though really I spend most of my life trying to avoid the console and just automating somehow.