Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7 | Hacker News Reader

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This comment sounds like a criticism of the way AWS is designed, not the concept of the CLI.

As someone who prefers CLI to GUI and works exclusively in CLI, I find the AWS CLI offerings no better than a GUI. AWS is a big ball of mud that keeps getting bigger. Commercial success does not change that fact.

Perhaps the point of starting with a CLI first instead of a GUI is that it creates limits, it favours simplicity and creativity. If you find yourself creating dozens of single-purpose utlities or one utility with dozens of options, then maybe you are doing something wrong.

Rather than looking to AWS as a model, why not look at something non-commercial, like djb's software or Wireguard. There is "power" in keeping a CLI simple.

There are probably alternative market segments for your approach. The AWS CLI is generated from the API, not the GUI. That is not CLI first either, but it follows the GIT approach of the CLI being effectively an API.

AWS is big and it keeps getting bigger. However that is not an argument for simplification. AWS does not add features because they don't know what else to do. They add all these features because they fulfill customer demand. Yes, you can come up with a dumbed down version of a cloud and wrap it in a beautiful CLI first approach. This might even work, you know, until people start picking up on it, feature requests come in... And then you are faced with either sticking to your original mission and serving a niche market, or breaking your promise for the potential gains in expanding your market share.

By building a CLI first approach, you need to be very good at positioning yourself in the market and picking the untapped potential. At either side, there be dragons and if profitability gets the better of you, that might very well be end of it.

I would rather have a CLI that wraps AWS or in general existing clouds behind a simple, friendly interface for common use cases. But of course you can't earn money with that.

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