Comment by solatic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by solatic | Hacker News Reader

Why can't people just pick the right tool for the job? The truth behind these managed services is that, for the correct usecases, they are VERY cheap. And for the wrong usecases, they are RIDICULOUSLY expensive.

Most businesses have nightly cronjobs generating some kind of report that is then emailed to stakeholders. Why on Earth would you run a dedicated Linux box for that anymore? Glue a nightly trigger to AWS Lambda, send the report via AWS SES, and it's free. Literally, because it fits quite easily within the free plan. No $5/month VPS box, no patching, no firewalling, no phone calls from execs at 6 AM wondering why their report isn't in their inbox and you track it down to the server being down when the cronjob was supposed to fire.

With that said, if you come to me and tell me what you want to add a new business feature to stream video for our customers off AWS, I'll first ask you why didn't you tell me you won the lottery, then I'll berate you for being stupid enough to spend your lottery winnings on the AWS bill.

Pick the right tool for the job.

This is the real truth. People complain about certain services and theirs costs (Lambda being one I've heard) but I have a full side project that runs on lambda with extremely bursty traffic and it couldn't be more perfect. If I had sustained activity I might look into something else but it really does come down to picking the right tool for the job.

> Glue a nightly trigger to AWS Lambda

You are forgetting the future cost of losing knowledge and control over your infrastructure.

agreed.

> Pick the right tool for the job.

This is such a tired expression. It basically means nothing in the industry, and exactly because of comments like yours.

Exactly who are you to say what my infrastructure desires are? Software is personal and people ignore this completely.

Some people just don't know any better or have starlight in their eyes and they manage to convince the business they need it. No brakes, no caution, no reflection on if they reallly need it. They just want it cause it is fashionable. Then when they eventually realize they are deep in a hole or it that it was the incorrect solution to their problem, then it becomes everyone else's fault (aws's fault, cloud computing industry blah blah blah) and they write blog posts about how terrible everything is, all while making businesses and other people trust us less and less each year. But that one clown not "using the right tool for the job" will never admit it or they disappear or move onto the next fad (he's probably a crypto bro now after implementing a piss poor chatbot somewhere).

Measure twice, cut once. Fail fast is load of nonsense and burns a lot of money for no good reason.

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