An On-Premise Developer Falls Hard for AWS

A Late Start

I’ve been completely absorbed in AWS lately.

I knew I should have moved to the cloud ages ago. I even wrote about keeping postponing the server migration a while back — but at the time it was still in “someday” territory.

This year I actually started getting hands-on with AWS, and… why is this so fun?

Coming From IDC to AWS

For someone who survived 10+ years on on-premise servers, AWS was a revelation.

Spinning up an EC2 instance takes 5 minutes. Getting a server into an IDC means quotes, purchase orders, delivery, racking, OS installation… minimum 2 weeks. That gap is staggering.

Upload to S3 and it’s automatically redundant. Use RDS and backups are automatic. Set up CloudWatch and monitoring takes care of itself. I was doing all of this manually the entire time.

Those days of going to the server room to replace UPS batteries suddenly feel like the Stone Age.

Services That Hooked Me

The standouts from what I’ve tried so far:

Lambda — The concept of just uploading functions without a server didn’t click at first. But once you use it, it’s incredibly convenient. Simple APIs are done. No server management needed.

S3 — I thought it was just file storage, but it does static website hosting too. Hook it up with CloudFront and you’ve got a CDN. And the pricing is reasonable.

CloudFormation — Infrastructure as code. The YAML was brutal at first, but once you get used to it, replicating server environments becomes trivial. What used to require a “can you set up another identical environment?” request is now a single file.

Plenty of Stumbles Too

It’s not all sunshine, of course.

IAM permissions had me stuck for ages. “Access Denied” everywhere, and figuring out which policy was blocking what felt like a maze. The policy concept wasn’t intuitive at first.

VPC networking is another headache when things get tangled. Subnets, route tables, internet gateways, NAT gateways… the concepts are different from on-premise networking, and the adjustment took time.

And then there’s billing. Misconfigure something and you’re looking at a surprise bill. I once left a test instance running overnight — thankfully it was free tier so the damage was minimal, but in production that would have been a cold-sweat moment.

What’s Next

Now that I’ve got some real hands-on time with AWS, I want to study it more systematically.

I’m thinking about going for an AWS certification. Planning to start with the Developer Associate — apparently the prep process itself is an excellent way to learn the services properly.

I started late, but that’s exactly why every discovery hits harder. Having the IDC background means I know the pain these services are solving. “Wait, you can do THIS that easily?” — that reaction keeps coming.

All those years sweating in server rooms are actually helping me understand AWS on a deeper level. Turns out no experience is truly wasted.