It's even worse than it appears..
Saturday April 26, 2025; 9:53 AM EDT
  • I have been getting warnings on all my Node.js code that uses AWS api's that come September they're all going to break. #
  • I'm working on my mail list stuff this week, trying to get the HTML to work for a lot more people than it was working for, and it's a very depressing process, but I did the work, but I don't plan on looking at this again for another five years, if then. #
  • But lurking in the background is the threat by AWS, and I consider a threat, that if I don't rewrite my code in a non-insignificant way, before September, it's all going to just stop working. I took the time the other day to actually look at what's involved, and I see that they changed/broke their API to use promises. Great. Another stupid exercise in fealty. #
  • I think they're going to regret doing this, because I don't have the time to go so deep in the bowels of pretty much my entire codebase, and potentially break everything, and then have to debug it, when I have so many other things to do, and I'm getting older, and I just don't have the energy to devote to make-work for Amazon. The arrogance of it, and how diseconomic it is. #
  • They never promised they wouldn't break all their developers, but geez who would've thought they wanted to? #
  • I don't think they're actually going to be able to flip the switch. #
  • I'd love to hear what other developers think.#
  • PS: Amazon APIs are the worst, so over-complicated, you have to understand everything before you can do anything. But once they work, they keep working. That's the only reason people put up with it. I've switched almost everything but S3 and SES to Digital Ocean because their docs and example code are great and they seem about the same price as Amazon, but my time is all I have, and Amazon doesn't use it well and ultimately that's going to hurt their business, and it seems September is when the shit is going to hit the fan for many, definitely for me.#
  • PPS: This is different from the breakage that came in the Twitter API when Musk took over. No one was paying anything for this. But I pay a lot for AWS, more every month, as my storage costs go up. I think someone in AWS in a position to make big decisions has no clear idea where the costs are for their customers or they wouldn't do this. Imagine a company of gas stations deciding to change the shape of all the nozzles on their gas pumps in September. "We gave you plenty of times to adapt!" they might say. Yes, but -- as long as we have to change why not change to your competitor's service? The strangeness of their APIs is their lockin. I don't think they have factored that into their plans.#

© copyright 1994-2025 Dave Winer.

Last update: Saturday April 26, 2025; 3:24 PM EDT.

You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)