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Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by k__ on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @04:14AM (#15805604)
OT: Job advice needed (because I think many back-end devs will be here :D)

I'm thinking about going full-stack next year. I have a bit of experience building APIs besides being mainly a front-end developer.

Is going "cloud only" a good idea? I thought about starting with AWS Lambda, S3, DynamoDB and the Serverless framework.

Are the providers hugely different or is it a good idea to spread out and do some Azure and GCP too?

Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by dotancohen on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @04:47AM (#15805709)
That's completely off topic. In fact, the question is so broad that I cannot think of anyplace other than the water cooler or Quora to ask it.

Career advice: Never go "foobar-only". Make an effort to learn "foobar" but understand whatever is one layer below it in the stack. Want to go "cloud-only"? Learn OpenCloud, not AWS.

Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by k__ on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @04:53AM (#15805736)
lol, while complaining you still gave me a decent answer, thanks :)
Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by dotancohen on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @05:39AM (#15805903)
Of course, we're all here to help each other! Good luck!
Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by gtsteve on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @04:51AM (#15805721)
It's definitely worthwhile to learn Lambda, S3 and serverless apps but all that stuff can be learned on the job. S3 is especially easy to use for most use-cases and any decent programmer can learn to use it in an hour or two.

However, I would definitely learn a SQL dialect and learn how RDBMSes such as Postgres work (especially what is meant by ACID) as most companies are based around a database. Don't believe the hype - SQL is not dead. Dynamo is a great technology but there are many problems it can't solve for you.

Finally, I personally don't know Azure or GCP so well. Only knowing AWS in-depth hasn't held me back so far. I've used a few of Azure's services but I've never built a serious app on it.

My recommendation is to not really worry about individual technologies and to focus on safely handling and working with data.

Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by k__ on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @04:58AM (#15805756)
Yes.

I learned React and later React-Native. Selling myself as a "mobile consultant" then worked fine, nobody cared "how" I made these mobile apps.

My idea was the same with back-end, learning some framework and start selling myself as "mobile cloud consultant" or something, with the hopes that clients also don't care "how" I create these cloud back-ends.

I know SQL, worked most of my time with RDBMSs, so this wouldn't be big of an issue. As I said I already did a few back-ends, but my focus was on front-end, usability and such.

I just mentioned DynamoDB because I had the impression that it was "the AWS DB", do they offer an SQL service besides Redshift?

Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by gtsteve on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @05:17AM (#15805825)
Yes, they have RDS: https://aws.amazon.com/rds/

It allows you to launch many common database engines, which are managed and backed up by AWS. I've been using it for a few years and for my use-case it's great.

Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by k__ on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @05:20AM (#15805839)
lol, I always had the impression RDS was the AWS Redis :D
Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by krallja on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @08:32AM (#15806573)
Elasticache is the AWS Redis.
Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by akoncius on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @05:16AM (#15805821)
Yes, AWS has product called RDS , where you can choose RDBMS such as MySQL, PostgreSQL , Aurora (MySQL compatible database) and so on.

DynamoDB is noSQL database.

Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by k__ on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @05:22AM (#15805849)
I knew that DynamoDB is a noSQL DB, I thought with the noSQL hype and everyone doing MongoDB/RethinkDB back-ends now, they would simply say "In the cloud you have to use this and that's it"

RDS somehow sounded like the Redis service of AWS, hehe.

Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by keypusher on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @06:19AM (#15806025)
AWS offers hosted Redis/Memcache via ElastiCache
Re:EC2 Bare Metal Instances with Direct Access to Hardware by keypusher on Wednesday November 29, 2017 @06:27AM (#15806041)
Learning your way around cloud services is a great idea, but I would be hesitant about starting with Lambda and Serverless, or doing only that. It's somewhat of a different paradigm, kind of back-end for front-end developers, or at least people who don't want to deal with infrastructure. While that is a great thing, I think there is value in understanding what a more tradition webserver on AWS looks like with an EC2 instance, EBS volumes, AMIs, security groups, load balancer, SSH access, etc.