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How do you take pricing into your design considerations? Does it come with experience from using an AWS service in production and understanding how it's priced,
by akh 6y ago
How do you take pricing into your design considerations? Does it come with experience from using an AWS service in production and understanding how it's priced, combined with the usage numbers the new system might get? I'm trying to learn more about how engineers currently do this.
- scrollaway 6y agoBasically, yes. It's not that complicated, it's just not something engineers are usually used to do. If you use an AWS service, you look at its pricing. Take s3 for example: whenever you use it, you'll pay for outgoing bandwidth, PUTs, GETs, and storage. So you seek to minimize all of these: 1. Bandwidth: use cache layers. This also minimizes GETs. 2. PUTs: design your app in a way that doesn't do unnecessary inserts into s3. Consider alternatives such as redis, postgres or filesystem depending on the need. 3. Storage: compress your objects if they compress well. If they aren't often accessed, use storage classes and auto lifecycle management. Pricing in AWS generally reflects some kind of engineering limitations you will face at scale in the first place, so it makes sense to go through this whole exercise either way.
- thanksforthe42 6y agoCalling programmers "Engineers" is a misnomer. I wish programmers had the prestige it deserved for combining Science, tradition, authority, and art. Engineers are not allowed to use tradition, authority or art. They are restricted to being modern day calculators. Nothing is wrong with either.
- csharptwdec19 6y agoThe shift from 'Developer/Programmer' to engineer has indeed been part of a push away from creativity towards cookie-cutter work. An interesting analogue would be the Automotive industry; As time progressed, Companies focused more and more on 'engineering' versus art/tradition/etc. But as the industry evolved, "Flashy" vehicles that took risks became moreso either a halo product for a brand, or relegated to Luxury/Boutique. And, of course, there was the dark side of this shift; A good example from the 70s, the level of 'engineering' driving the design of the vehicle and it's assembly didn't take into consideration the actual line worker; in Ohio the workers wound up getting overworked, burned out, and in some cases actively sabotaged the product, because they were being treated like automated machines.
- thanksforthe42 6y agoI think that missed the point. Engineers are applied scientists. Programmers are not applied scientists.
- scrollaway 6y agoWhy does any of this matter?
- thanksforthe42 6y agoDifferent expertise. I'm guessing you are neither?
- scrollaway 6y agoIncorrect guess, and it still doesn't really change anything. You're just playing with words. It's no more useful than a full thread arguing about a misspelling; Just pure noise. Software engineering could learn a lot from, say, civil engineering. It could also learn a lot from interface design and I'm sure even microbiologists and astronauts could teach us a lot. Engineering is not special.
- thanksforthe42 6y agoProgrammers have no idea.