Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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.'"

5 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Unlimited budget by DonCarlos · · Score: 4, Funny

    Having unlimited development budget is definitely THE good thing I sometimes miss myself ;)

    --
    Marcin
  2. 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
  3. Re:100 Services ? by shmlco · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ever considered the amount of data that has to be churned through to build your average custom My Yahoo home page? Especially one with a ton of custom news items, stocks, local weather, local movie listings, and so on?

    Major web sites are just a "little" more complex than your typical iWeb home page...

    --
    Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
  4. Artists? by should_be_linear · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well *Some* developers are like Artists, others are more like Naïve painters with unlimited budgets for colors and huge canvases.

    --
    839*929
  5. 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?