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OP is writing a technical blog on AWS, primarily aimed at existing AWS users. Defining what IAM means in there is about as pointless as you needing to define wh

OP is writing a technical blog on AWS, primarily aimed at existing AWS users. Defining what IAM means in there is about as pointless as you needing to define what OP meant in your post.

graycat 11y ago
> primarily aimed at existing AWS users. Either that, that is, really poor business thinking, or, as I concluded, some poor technical writing. I don't believe the first.
- prof_hobart 11y ago
  Given the point you're trying to make, I'm really struggling with understanding your comment. Are you saying that you don't believe the Amazon technical blog is aimed primarily at existing AWS users?
  - graycat 11y ago
    I'm just saying that there is bad technical writing, that there's no good reason for it, and that it's darned costly. If the that OP blog post was just for existing, old AWS customers, then find, good, okay, sure, of course, but make that point clear, up front. Else, Jeff Bezos, I'm building a Web site; I've got the production quality, reasonably high capacity, scalable software written and running; HP has offered me servers initially for free; I plan, intend, and hope my Web site becomes a big thing; I should consider a cloud instead of my own server farm; AWS should be a candidate; I'm close enough now to going live that I should be looking into AWS; I read the OP to get started; I came away from that post and its poor technical writing torqued and wanting to set aside AWS even if I was offered it for free (for me to work through enough more AWS bad technical writing for my Web site would be much more costly than free, making a free service still too costly), that's a bad situation for Jeff Bezos, Amazon, AWS, and me. There's a lot of absurdly bad technical writing in computing for absurdly poor reasons with absurdly high costs. I should have been torqued decades ago; I should be torqued now, and I am. I just want better technical writing, in particular to save my time, effort, and money. For this instance, the blog just needed a common statement about "Who this information is intended for". For AWS to put out information about their services with bad writing that torques off a highly serious and experienced software developer is bad business for both AWS and me. I am just objecting to the costly bad technical writing. Simple. Should not be difficult, complicated, or controversial.
    - prof_hobart 11y ago
      You seem to be mistaking your lack of knowledge of a particular set of technologies with bad writing. I read it and it was an absolutely clear article to me. I want an article explaining how Amazon's API gateway works, not what all of Amazon's services are, what API gateways are, what REST is etc. There's already plenty of those out there. Not every article needs to explain every concept from scratch. They even have a link to a page on what IAM is for those who don't know (admittedly it's not on the first mention, but that hardly makes the entire article badly written).
      - graycat 11y ago
        The issue here is not me but some bad technical writing. The OP failed to explain that a prerequisite to reading the post was being a long time AWS user. Then, the OP was bad technical writing. Done. QED. Without such a warning about prerequisites, the undefined acronym was bad technical writing. > your lack of knowledge of a particular set of technologies That whole concept is big mistake common in computing. The "technologies" in question are, for at least a good first description, just dirt simple with meager prerequisites. None of us in computing should try to carry the whole pile of simplistic trivia around between our ears. For a related lesson, after a while in academics, it becomes obvious that only fools try to carry the whole research library around between their ears -- the lesson is much stronger for the less deep, less good material in practical computing. With good technical writing, nearly anything in practical computing can be explained plenty well enough to nearly any of us. I don't have a relevant "lack" of anything in computing.
        prof_hobart 11y ago
        It wasn't undefined. There was a hyperlink to a page all about it. You failed to explain what OP meant, and didn't explain that your comment was aimed at people who knew this kind of terminology. Does that make your comment bad writing? No one is suggesting that people should carry every bit of technology around in their heads. Google is a great source for finding things you don't know. The alternatives - explaining in every single blog post the complete set of terms that you need to understand to read it - would make for massive, unreadable posts and would be 90% useless for most of the audience it is aimed at.

OP is writing a technical blog on AWS, primarily aimed at existing AWS users. Defining what IAM means in there is about as pointless as you needing to define what OP meant in your post.

graycat 11y ago

> primarily aimed at existing AWS users. Either that, that is, really poor business thinking, or, as I concluded, some poor technical writing. I don't believe the first.

prof_hobart 11y ago
Given the point you're trying to make, I'm really struggling with understanding your comment. Are you saying that you don't believe the Amazon technical blog is aimed primarily at existing AWS users?
- graycat 11y ago
  I'm just saying that there is bad technical writing, that there's no good reason for it, and that it's darned costly. If the that OP blog post was just for existing, old AWS customers, then find, good, okay, sure, of course, but make that point clear, up front. Else, Jeff Bezos, I'm building a Web site; I've got the production quality, reasonably high capacity, scalable software written and running; HP has offered me servers initially for free; I plan, intend, and hope my Web site becomes a big thing; I should consider a cloud instead of my own server farm; AWS should be a candidate; I'm close enough now to going live that I should be looking into AWS; I read the OP to get started; I came away from that post and its poor technical writing torqued and wanting to set aside AWS even if I was offered it for free (for me to work through enough more AWS bad technical writing for my Web site would be much more costly than free, making a free service still too costly), that's a bad situation for Jeff Bezos, Amazon, AWS, and me. There's a lot of absurdly bad technical writing in computing for absurdly poor reasons with absurdly high costs. I should have been torqued decades ago; I should be torqued now, and I am. I just want better technical writing, in particular to save my time, effort, and money. For this instance, the blog just needed a common statement about "Who this information is intended for". For AWS to put out information about their services with bad writing that torques off a highly serious and experienced software developer is bad business for both AWS and me. I am just objecting to the costly bad technical writing. Simple. Should not be difficult, complicated, or controversial.
  - prof_hobart 11y ago
    You seem to be mistaking your lack of knowledge of a particular set of technologies with bad writing. I read it and it was an absolutely clear article to me. I want an article explaining how Amazon's API gateway works, not what all of Amazon's services are, what API gateways are, what REST is etc. There's already plenty of those out there. Not every article needs to explain every concept from scratch. They even have a link to a page on what IAM is for those who don't know (admittedly it's not on the first mention, but that hardly makes the entire article badly written).
    - graycat 11y ago
      The issue here is not me but some bad technical writing. The OP failed to explain that a prerequisite to reading the post was being a long time AWS user. Then, the OP was bad technical writing. Done. QED. Without such a warning about prerequisites, the undefined acronym was bad technical writing. > your lack of knowledge of a particular set of technologies That whole concept is big mistake common in computing. The "technologies" in question are, for at least a good first description, just dirt simple with meager prerequisites. None of us in computing should try to carry the whole pile of simplistic trivia around between our ears. For a related lesson, after a while in academics, it becomes obvious that only fools try to carry the whole research library around between their ears -- the lesson is much stronger for the less deep, less good material in practical computing. With good technical writing, nearly anything in practical computing can be explained plenty well enough to nearly any of us. I don't have a relevant "lack" of anything in computing.
      - prof_hobart 11y ago
        It wasn't undefined. There was a hyperlink to a page all about it. You failed to explain what OP meant, and didn't explain that your comment was aimed at people who knew this kind of terminology. Does that make your comment bad writing? No one is suggesting that people should carry every bit of technology around in their heads. Google is a great source for finding things you don't know. The alternatives - explaining in every single blog post the complete set of terms that you need to understand to read it - would make for massive, unreadable posts and would be 90% useless for most of the audience it is aimed at.