Amazon's Werner Vogels on Large Scale Systems

ChelleChelle writes "When it comes to managing and deploying large scale systems and networks, discipline and focus matter more than specific technologies. In a conversation with ACM Queuecast host Mike Vizard, Amazon CTO Werner Vogels says the key to success is to have a 'relentless commitment to a modular computer architecture that makes it possible for the people who build the applications to also be responsible for running and deploying those systems within a common IT framework.'"

Comments

scale?

[lecithin]

"When it comes to managing and deploying large scale systems and networks, discipline and focus matter more than specific technologies.

How about:

When it comes to DOING ANYTHING, discipline and focus matter more than specific technologies.

If you are at a 'small scale' environment and are limited to specific technologies, discipline and focus matter even more. Your choice is less with technologies and more with how you use them.

"the key to success is to have a 'relentless commitment to a modular computer architecture that makes it possible for the people who build the applications to also be responsible for running and deploying those systems within a common IT framework.'"

We have a BINGO!!!!!

Re:Specific technologies do matter.

[AuMatar]

I work at Amazon. While we'd certainly be allowed to use SML, Lisp, etc, nobody does. 99%+ of development is in Perl (or Mason), C++, and Java. Probably at least one extra 9 there. If someone did write a production service in something other than C++ or Java, they'd probably see a push to rewrite it immediately to something more maintainable- something more than a tiny percent of our devs know. What little might be done in odd languages like that are probably one off or personal scripts used by devs and not in production. Anyone who suggested that our success is from procedural or niche languages has no idea whats really going on at the company.