libaws VS kawipiko

i print the error along with file and line number every time i return it. clunky, but it works.

in fact i print file and line with every log message.

https://github.com/nathants/libaws/blob/87fb45b4cae20abd1bb1...

cloud is so good now it’s hard to justify not doing something bespoke. ec2 spot is insanely cheaper than turnkey cicd, and better in almost every way.

i’m delighted to pay 30% over infra cost for convenience, but not 500%. and it better actually be convenient, not just have a good landing page and sales team.

this month i learned localzones have even better spot prices. losangeles-1 is half the spot price of us-west-2.

for a runner, do something like this, but react to an http call instead of a s3 put[1].

for a web ui do something like this[2].

s3, lambda, and ec2 spot are a perfect fit for cicd and a lot more.

1. https://github.com/nathants/libaws/tree/91b1c27fc947e067ed46...

2. https://github.com/nathants/aws-exec/tree/e68769126b5aae0e35...

like linux, cloud is a lot to learn, but worth it.

like linux, cloud is best kept simple, or it can become brittle and confusing.

like linux, cloud has a lot of cool things like zfs, that should be appreciated but rarely used.

like linux, using go makes your life a lot easier. the aws go sdk is the documentation.

like linux, you have to learn a lot and then find the core utility you actually care about. for me it is:

https://github.com/nathants/libaws

the good new is, for the 95% of projects that can tolerate it, aws the good parts are actually both simple and easy[1].

it’s hard to find things you can’t build on s3, dynamo, lambda, and ec2.

if either compliance or a 5% project demand it, complicated solutions should be explored.

1. https://github.com/nathants/libaws

i also wanted a good cli for aws, and built one:

https://github.com/nathants/libaws

companies like fly are fantastic.

they provide a good service, and they put market pressure on aws.

cool transition and fun writeup!

for low, intermittent traffic sites, go on lambda might be a better comparison:

https://github.com/nathants/libaws/tree/master/examples/simp...

lambda + s3. add ec2 spot if you need it.

just make sure you understand how billing works. mostly it’s just egress bandwidth is expensive.

do something like this:

https://github.com/nathants/aws-gocljs

or with less opinions:

https://github.com/nathants/libaws/tree/master/examples/simp...

welcome to cloud, glhf!

aws ux for retaining both hair and sanity.

https://github.com/nathants/libaws

build and scale systems with artificial load on aws! scaling the load testing will be just as interesting as scaling the system under test.

start with low bottlenecks, ie a cluster of c6i.large ec2 spot. how fast can you do this? have fast can you scale that? ec2 and s3 is all you need to build anything.

use ec2 spot, avoid network egress, avoid cross region/zone traffic, create and destroy ec2 instances as needed instead of letting them sit idle. you could grow system scaling intution for the price of your streaming subscriptions.

start with something like this:

https://github.com/nathants/libaws/tree/master/examples/comp...

maybe mess around with public datasets on aws, just make sure to be in the correct region to avoid data egress.

welcome systems friend. one accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions. scaling is fun!

aws has too many knobs, presumably to satisfy the union of the needs of all the enterprise customers. that said, lambda+s3+dynamodb+ec2 are pretty good once you tape over all the knobs that aren't needed. i work with them like this[1].

these days i build on aws and r2. aws for the nuts and bolts, r2 for high bandwidth egress. it's a perfect match.

1. https://github.com/nathants/libaws

[the author here] Indeed didn't mention anything about the shared webhosting solutions, just as I didn't mention anything about S3 + CloudFront, or Backblaze B2 + a CDN in front, or Cloudflare + WebWorkers, or AWS Lambda, or any other thousand ways to do it... (Like for example there is <https://redbean.dev/> which I find just so intriguing, and not far from my own <https://github.com/volution/kawipiko> proposal.)

Although shared webhosting is part of our web history -- and still a viable choice especially if you have something in PHP or something that requires a little-bit of dynamic content -- I don't think it's still a common choice for today.

It's somewhere in between dedicated cloud-hosting, because although you have an actual HTTP server (usually Apache or Nginx) that you can't configure it much because it's managed by the provider, thus it gives you the same features (and limitations) as an a proper cloud-hosted static site solution (such as Netlify); and between self-hosting because of the same reasons, having an actual full-blown HTTP server, but one you can't fully control, thus it gives you fewer features than a self-managed VM in a cloud provider or self-hosted machine. Thus unless you need PHP, or `htaccess`, I think the other two alternatives make a better choice.

The issue with "static sites", due to the de-facto requirements in 2022 imposed by the the internet "gatekeepers" (mainly search engines), is that they aren't "just a bunch of files on disk that we can just serve with proper `Content-Type`, `Last-Modified` or `ETag`, and perhaps compressed"; we now need (in order to meet the latest hoops the gatekeepers want us to jump through) to also do a bunch of things that aren't quite possible (or certainly not easily) with current web servers. For example:

* minification (which I've cited in my article) -- besides compression, one should also employ HTML / CSS / JS and other asset minification; none of the classical web servers support this; there is something like <https://www.modpagespeed.com/>, but it's far from straightforward to deploy (let alone on a shared web-host;)

* when it comes to headers (be it the ones for CSP and other security related ones) or even `Link` headers for preloading, these aren't easy to configure, especially if you need those `Link` headers only for some HTML pages and not all resources; in this regard I don't know how many shared webhosts actually allow you to tinker with these;

The point I was trying to make is that if you want to deploy a professional (as in performant) static web site, just throwing some files in a folder and pointing Apache or Nginx at them isn't enough. If the performance you are getting by default from such a setup is enough for you, then perfect! If not there is a lot of pain getting everything to work properly.