Top all-time · #6450
Forrest Brazeal
Personal blog · forrestbrazeal.comcareerprogrammingculture
Forrest Brazeal's personal blog at forrestbrazeal.com covers career, programming and culture. Since 2016, 12 different Hacker News readers have linked it 112 times, most often “IAM Is The Real Cloud Lock-In”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Posts on cloud computing, including AWS IAM and cloud strategy, and on cloud careers. Commenters cite them as support for their points, and one credits the author's Cloud Resume Challenge.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Paradox Inc. is the debut novel from Forrest Brazeal — a Silicon Valley time-travel satire from Ballantine Books, on sale January 27, 2027. Preorder now.
Most-linked posts?
- IAM Is The Real Cloud Lock-In5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2019-02-19
- Code-Wise, Cloud-Foolish4 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2020-01-06
- Amazon won't spin off AWS. That's hurting AWS3 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2019-07-25
- The Cloud Resume Challenge2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-04-27
What Hacker News says?
Yes, some of the leadership thinks that they can build a better cloud than MS or AWS. It is pretty hilarious to watch how spectacularly they fail. https://forrestbrazeal.com/2020/01/05/code-wise-cloud-foolis...
Comment linking /2020/01/05/code-wise-cloud-foolish-avoiding-bad-technology-choices/
on “Ask HN: Is your company sticking to on-premise servers? Why?”Submitted The creeping IT apocalypse as a story · 324 points
HN discussionThe answer is highly context dependent. If you think the degree will magically open up a lot of job opportunities for you, you might be kidding yourself. However, if you love to learn and don't mind putting in the long hours, it can be rewarding for its own sake. (Source: current OMSCS student, hopefully graduating in December) I made an "informed decision tree" awhile back that goes into much more detail about my t…
Comment linking /2017/05/08/omscs-a-working-professionals-guide-to-the-7k-cs-masters-degree/
on “Ask HN: Is Georgia Tech's Online Master in CS Worth It?”Submitted IAM Is The Real Cloud Lock-In as a story · 81 points
HN discussionIMO bare compute isn't really the AWS value prop; if all you need is a VPS (or a non-virtual one) AWS is expensive overkill. The reason to use them is all the peripheral services, tied together with IAM[1][2]. [1] https://forrestbrazeal.com/2019/02/18/cloud-irregular-iam-is... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19742038
Comment linking /2019/02/18/cloud-irregular-iam-is-the-real-cloud-lock-in/
on “A developer goes to a DevOps conference”Submitted How to read 100 books a year (and still have a life) as a story · 79 points
HN discussionthanks a TON forrest! your advocacy and lending your platform to help give a leg up to others in our industry has been super inspiring to me and I hope to do the same in future!! edit: for those who don't know - forrest does a Cloud Resume Challenge where he helps people get started with a career in the cloud - laying out exact steps and offering his personal network to anyone* who completes them: https://forrestbra…
Comment linking /2020/04/23/the-cloud-resume-challenge/
on “Show HN: Coding Career Handbook”Submitted How I learned to stop worrying and love the cubicle as a story · 79 points
HN discussionIt's part of a larger system called Hanover (built entirely on Lambda/API Gateway/DynamoDB/static S3) that handles scheduled shutdowns and cost savings reports across our many AWS development accounts. We built the shutdown POC in less than a week - the front end reporting console took a bit longer. We may open source it at some point. In the meantime you can check out: - A session my boss did at re:Invent that touc…
Comment linking /2016/09/25/adventures-in-aws-understanding-the-price-list-api/
on “AWS announces new region in Canada”Submitted Amazon won't spin off AWS. That's hurting AWS as a story · 73 points
HN discussionOne of the most frustrating things about this whole fiasco is that the OPM breach finally became public in the summer of 2015, but I and many other victims weren't officially notified (or offered our measly couple years of identity protection) until December or later. At the time, I shared some of my thoughts on the breach here (some of the info may be out of date in light of the new report; I was piecing stuff toge…
Comment linking /2015/12/08/welp-i-was-an-opm-hack-victim/
on “The OPM Data Breach [pdf]”Submitted How I got a CS degree with pen and paper and why I'm doing it again as a story · 34 points
HN discussionMy team has been using Step Functions for a couple of months now to orchestrate application deployments. It is way better than our old SWF-based solution - I especially love how easy it is to implement dynamic backoff between states. Biggest gripe: updating a state machine is still not supported (you can manage state machines through CloudFormation now, but I believe it updates with replacement, meaning the state ma…
Comment linking /2016/12/29/serverless-workflows-on-aws-my-journey-from-swf-to-step-functions/
on “Easily Create Complex Workflows with AWS Step Functions”Submitted Amazon won't spin off AWS. That's too bad for AWS as a story · 19 points
HN discussionFor anyone interested, the full list of 100 books (actually 101) is here: https://forrestbrazeal.com/2017/12/03/the-100-books-challeng... I'd appreciate thoughts and additional recommendations!
Comment linking /2017/12/03/the-100-books-challenge-full-reading-list/
on “How to read 100 books a year (and still have a life)”Submitted On writing and selling science fiction stories (2018) as a story · 14 points
HN discussionGetting around AWS IAM, or making it into a standard all cloud providers could adopt. As posted on HN a while back: https://forrestbrazeal.com/2019/02/18/cloud-irregular-iam-is... ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19742038 ).
Comment linking /2019/02/18/cloud-irregular-iam-is-the-real-cloud-lock-in/
on “Ask HN: What are the gaps in current infrastructure software?”Submitted Tech in the Time of Covid-19 as a story · 10 points
HN discussionFull reading list, for anyone interested: https://forrestbrazeal.com/2017/12/03/the-100-books-challeng...
Comment linking /2017/12/03/the-100-books-challenge-full-reading-list/
on “How to read one hundred books in a year”Submitted Code-Wise, Cloud-Foolish as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Amazon won't spin off AWS. That's too bad for AWS as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Amazon won't spin off AWS, and that's too bad for AWS as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Should you get a masters degree in computer science? An “informed decision tree” as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted How to Name Your Open Source Project as a story · 7 points
HN discussionSubmitted Cloud Irregular: IAM Is the Real Cloud Lock-In as a story · 6 points
HN discussionSubmitted Stop telling kids that programming is a foreign language (2016) as a story · 5 points
HN discussionSubmitted Code-wise, cloud-foolish: avoiding bad technology choices as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Building a Personal Brand in Tech as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Cloud Irregular: IAM Is the Real Cloud Lock-In as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted Full time remote as a story · 4 points
HN discussion
