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The Amazon Technology Platform

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the under-the-covers dept.

Don420 writes "Jim Gray has an interview with Amazon CTO Werner Vogels for ACM Queue. It is filled with a lot of details about the Amazon architecture that we have not seen before: 'If you hit the Amazon.com gateway page, the application calls more than 100 services to collect data and construct the page for you.' But also quite a strong statements about developing software at Amazon: 'Developers of our services can use any tools they see fit to build their services. [...] Whatever tools are necessary, we provide them, and then get the hell out of the way of the developers so that they can do their jobs. [...] Developers are like artists; they produce their best work if they have the freedom to do so, but they need good tools.'"

2 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds (almost) too good to be true... by allanj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if the actual developers/coders see it that way themselves. Sadly, CxO's often have a warped view of how things work "on the floor".

    --
    Black holes are where God divided by zero
  2. My question is by Aceticon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Developers of our services can use any tools they see fit to build their services.

    I wonder how they avoid the maintenance nightmare which is having multiple application components done using various obscure technologies/tools and the person that did it leaving the company and somebody else having to maintain/extend those application components?

    Do they standardize their build tools, require good documentation on the service implementations or just overwork the poor sods that have to do maintenance to death?