

Ask HN: Desktop tools for aws services? None to be found why? - isrsan

Hi there, I have been working with aws services(read DynamoDB, S3,SNS, SQS, etc) for a while now, and I am starting to get frustated with the state of affairs when in comes to the tools. I mean, don&#x27;t get me wrong aws provides a fairly practical web console, where you can get your job done, however it is far from a pleasure to work with.<p>Why is that there is not desktop tools for aws services? Is the status-quo good enough for people out there. I can see at least a few ways in which a desktop tool can make life much easier specially when dealing with DynamoDB. I know that S3(, EC2?) do have some desktop counterparts but that is it.<p>In any case love to hear what people thing about it.
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sdrinf
A handful of reasons (disclaimer: painting with very wide brush here, in the
hope that you get the strategic picture)

* The desktop market is fragmented. Pick your poison: walled garden with crappy devtools, OSS fanatics who will not pay for software in a million years; or warezing pirates. Note that whichever you choose, your app will still end up on torrent sites ~2 days after release anyways.

* The cross-OS development tools' end results are usually sub-pair, even compared with javascript.

* Desktop usage is, and has been stagnating for a while now; while mobile usage is growing at an incredible rate. Mobile native market is also highly fragmented.

* The lowest common denominator across all of these markets is the web: develop it once using responsive design, run it on everything for at least the next decade, or so.

* People have been voting for this platform with their wallets for a while now; specifically by being unable to pirate web apps.

* The stakeholders in selling AWS are: developers (for whom command line & APIs are the critical part), and business decision makers (who are looking for easy leverage). Neither target group is particularly interested in desktop apps.

* Specifically regarding to their propriatory tech (eg dynamoDB), developing a third-party desktop tool for it is a high-risk-no-reward endavour: you either get traction, in which case Amazon will gladly oblige with an app of their own; or it won't, in which case you're out with $lots$.

Joel Spolsky put it best: "Filling little gaps in another company's product
lineup is snatching nickels from the path of an oncoming steam roller." (
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html)
)

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isrsan
Enlightening comments, it indeed feels like a risky proposition given that any
tech produced by a 3rd party vendor will always have the loosing hand against,
tech produced inside Amazon.

Though desktop usage is stagnating, aws stakeholders probably do do their
tasks in desktops, I really can't see a lot of devs moving to mobile devices
to build things, thus this point seems mute to me.

The real question, as you said is, do developers really need/want these sort
of tools? I am actually not 100% that a lot of devs will shy away from well
engineered desktop tools, but at this point this is mostly a hunch feed by my
own frustrations with the tools

In any case thanks for the bottom link, I enjoyed reading it.

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brianmurphy
It's good enough for me. After my resource is spun up, I'm talking to it
directly through protocol so the AWS console is a quick and dirty on/off
add/remove interface.

As someone who has worked with a lot of enterprise management tools, the
situation could be MUCH worse than what AWS provides. Maybe that's why it
doesn't bother me. :)

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giaour
If all you need is DynamoDB views, you could try RazorSQL
[http://razorsql.com/articles/razorsql_amazon_dynamodb.html](http://razorsql.com/articles/razorsql_amazon_dynamodb.html)

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mattkrea
I believe many that use these services are happy enough with awscli. They are
targeting developers after all.

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anigbrowl
Make some, even if they're minimal - it might be that Amazon themselves will
be interested.

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msie
I've seen desktop tools in the past but they seem to have been abandoned.

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isrsan
Would you have those links at hand maybe?

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lovelearning
What features are you looking for?

