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Comment by simonw | Hacker News Reader

The thing I always want from AWS tutorials which I can never find is guidance that doesn't involve using their web console.

I have a weird hang-up about configuring ops stuff through web interfaces. I will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid them - I want to get to the point where my deployment is controlled entirely from scripts in source control as quickly as possible, because that I can trust - I know that web interfaces will change in the future.

But unfortunately this means that most tutorials leave me frustrated. At this point I think this is more of a personal failure - I need to get over this hangup so I can actually follow the documentation that exists out there and learn to use the tools!

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Agreed. The AWS developer docs are great but the first few chapters in e.g. SQS and SNS were "here's how to do it manually". Cloudformation is more of an appendix. Though, devils advocate, if they all started with "install Terraform" that might be a tall order and put people off.

We recently looked into AWS MSK (managed Kafka). Many of the crucial tasks, such as creation of topics, were more or less left as an exercise to the reader with some pretty distant dots to join.

If they'd been forced to explain how to automate all the necessary tasks in MSK, they might have had to make better tools. Or we might have given up on it sooner.

That’s how Transit Gateway documentation was in the beginning as well. A LOT of information was left out and it took them more than a year to provide a best practices page.

I write tutorials for a living and can't understand why people write such tutorials.

It's much more trouble to take and maintain web console screenshots than code snippes.

And as you said, it doesn't even make sense in the long run...

> maintain

Taking them is the easy part.

Easily my favourite feature of Google Cloud is every(?) web console action has the CLI command, or API RPC to achieve the same action.

It means I do every task the first time in the web console, where it's easy and discoverable, the second time in the web console again but I take note of the commands/RPC's, but the third->infinite times I've automated it.

> Easily my favourite feature of Google Cloud is every(?) web console action has the CLI command, or API RPC to achieve the same action.

I believe that's true of the AWS console, also; there's even a(few?) Chrome extensions to generate CFN and/or TF to replay console actions because the API calls are present in XHRs from the console. I often use the dev tools as a cheatsheet for what params to plug in for things, or to find out how AWS APIs relate to one another

What APIs can I use to create and manage Google Cloud projects, credentials, and billing?

Most things are available under alpha or beta gcloud CLI, but I couldn't find any public reference for the RPC calls.

It is because there are many ways to configure AWS. Should the tutorial use aws cli, cloudformation, terraform, cdk, sam? The Management Console tutorials get you familiar with the concepts quickly, but it is up to the developer use that knowledge with the tools of their choice.

>It is because there are many ways to configure AWS ... it is up to the developer use that knowledge with the tools of their choice.

I see this as a huge negative of AWS, personally. While the "freedom" of being able to choose whichever Infra-as-Code tool I personally prefer is nice, it's also a huge negative that there isn't one single tool that has the full backing and endorsement of AWS.

CloudFormation is the "official" tool, but it's basically a second class citizen in AWS rife with bugs and gotchas, and often lags in adding support for new AWS features. CDK is the up-and-coming "official" tool that seems like it might take the spotlight, but it's still in pre-release and because it relies on CloudFormation under the hood, it too is less than ideal.

Terraform is probably the most feature-complete and most frequently updated IaC tool, but since it's technically third party it isn't going to be included in official AWS docs/tutorials or get first party support from AWS.

Then you throw in the other stuff like the Beanstalk CLI, Copilot, SAM, Chalice, Amplify CLI... there are so many tools for creating resources in AWS that it's overwhelming when trying to decide which one to use.

Just FYI, CDK now supports Terraform: https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/cdk-for-terraform-enabling-py...

CDK-TF is maintained by Hashicorp, so it also is technically third party not an "official" tool from AWS.

I have a guide on using Serverless.com infra-as-code to get started with Lambdas. 0% console GUI

https://www.alec.fyi/set-up-serverless.html

Lambda especially has good support with CLI, SAM and CloudFormation.

Pretty much everyone moves on to one after getting introduced in AWS Console Web UI.

Pretty much all features are available through aws cli.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/lambda/inde...

Right - but there's hardly any tutorial coverage of how to use that tool.

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