Thread by @QuinnyPig

Since Twitter has asked: it's time to play Explore That Cloud with @digitalocean.

It turns out that they're going to be sponsoring my nonsense again soon, but this is why I have sponsorship folks on my end--to serve as an editorial firewall! This will not save them, but it does get me a link that offers free credits for experimenting! do.co/lastweek

On the one hand I'm immediately taken aback by the idea of using @github to oauth into my cloud provider, then realize that this is patently absurd. They have all of my code already.

Hell, @github is where I store my access credentials accidentally anyway!

@github "What the hell are you, some kind of sarcastic robot?!" demands @cloudflare. I'm not doing anything nutty here; it's my home internet connection.

And WTF is going on with the design of this interstitial?

It offends my robotic nature.

@github @Cloudflare "Hurry the f*ck up* demands @google's recaptcha. "We need you to do unpaid AI work for us quickly, before that car blows through the intersection!"

@github @Cloudflare @Google A quick "Click here to confirm your account" email, and I'm in. Now I have to set up billing. They accept Bitcoin.

Just kidding; can you even imagine? They're running a business, not a money laundering scheme.

@github @Cloudflare @Google This always grinds my gears: it autofills my address using some service, but then insists I type the zip code myself.

Then it corrects it to the long form zip code.

IF YOU KNOW THE ANSWER WHY ARE YOU ASKING ME?!

@github @Cloudflare @Google The marketers have gotten to their signup flow. "What are you using it for" is now a mandatory question.

Then a "Which technologies are you going to use with it." I pretend I work at @irobot and these are @awscloud services, and thus select them all.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud At @digitalocean's marketing department it is now Gin O'Clock.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean Credit where due: @digitalocean's dashboard passes my Iron Test of Bullshit and doesn't try to show me everything I've selected. Nothing it's suggesting is patently unreasonable other than the insulting insinuation that I'd use Docker willingly.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean We're going to spin up a *nix instance, which is going to be pretty embarrassing for @digitalocean if it fails; this has been their bread and butter since they launched. FreeBSD is a first class citizen!

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean I pick Ubuntu, since CentOS is my past, I don't feel like being insulted if I have to ask for help with Debian, and though I expect to run this thing for all of 20 minutes there's a great chance Fedora will go EoL before then.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean This is a dark pattern. It implies that the least expensive option is $40 a month rather than the $5 a month option.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean Since their offerings break Cloud Rules and charge the same prices everywhere, I'll pick San Francisco.

I hope this isn't hosted by the creaky shack with flickering power known as @henet. I want this thing to stay up for the full 20 minutes!

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet Here's a marketing misfire in a different direction. It's almost beyond belief that ipv6, private networking, and monitoring would all be free add-ons. I had to double check. Promote that those things are all free on this page, @digitalocean!

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet It defaults to a one-time password that it emails me. The "one time" gives me hope; it sure beats the dismal @ibmcloud approach of storing the root password forever in cleartext, visible in the console. SSH is of course an option as well.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet @IBMcloud Selecting SSH simply pops open a dialogue. "Paste your public key here, name it, and hit save," then gets out of my way.

WTF sorcery is this?! Doesn't @digitalocean know it's supposed to blow me completely out of the signup flow to another site to upload my key?!

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet @IBMcloud A lot going on here. "Tags" aren't the key/value model other clouds use, so that takes a bit of getting used to, but upon reflection makes tons more sense to me.

"Click here to enable backups" is freaking awesome. Smart people will select this.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet @IBMcloud I click "Create Droplet" and it's up before I can do a screencapture. Uh... this is different.

Take that, Amazon's one-day shipping.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet @IBMcloud This is a bit conflicting: the username with the ssh key is root. My ancient Unix admin origins shudder at the idea as logging in as root; my modern sensibilities tell me that "root versus passwordless sudo are functionally the same." I'm not sure how to feel.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet @IBMcloud Oh hell yes, @digitalocean offers a managed database!

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet @IBMcloud As with virtually every cloud provider, there's a metadata endpoint. It's not authenticated, but it also doesn't grant access to credentials either.

Please don't put credentials in user-data, in any provider. There are better ways.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet @IBMcloud They offer a bunch of other things too--databases, disk volumes, an object store called Spaces, monitoring, a full API, and of course because we're in the darkest timeline, managed Kubernetes.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet @IBMcloud Okay, this is awesome. A security log that
1) Doesn't take 20 minutes to log events
B) Is easily understandable
iii) doesn't charge me for the privilege

is one of those user-centric features that shows some serious attention was paid to the cohesive experience.

@github @Cloudflare @Google @iRobot @awscloud @digitalocean @henet @IBMcloud There are a few striking things about this platform.

Most notable is the sense of cohesiveness. The Databases or Spaces dashboards don't feel like they're built by demons dwelling in hell, forbidden to talk to the angels on the billing team.

There's not a sarcastic number of certifications you can get on DigitalOcean technologies.

The bill is "basic arithmetic" levels of complexity to predict.

And their documentation is phenomenal. Not only does it have an authorship date, but a date it was last validated.

"Well they're not a serious contender because they don't have an AI powered piano *OR* a service that can talk to satellites in space!" Whatever you say, techbro--but take a look at what your company's workloads look like before saying this is incomplete.

My blog post about @digitalocean vs. @awscloud from October remains unaltered. lastweekinaws.com/blog/should-i-…

Other than the nits I've pointed out above, what would I change if I were @digitalocean? We pause here to ask you, Internet! Should I address technology, or marketing?

@digitalocean Technology it is. You disappoint me, internet. This is the less interesting path, mostly because from a technology perspective @digitalocean basically gets it right.

Barring services like managed k8s, the core functionality I just tested is largely unchanged for years.

There are edge cases (I saw complaints about their ipv6 strategy in my mentions), but this is incredibly well done, extraordinarily accessible to newcomers, and delivers exactly what it says it will.

You could whine or cry about 15-50 more managed services you wish they'd offer, but instead they've chosen to focus on polishing this experience until it shines.

Even @GCPcloud has way more friction in getting a basic VM up, and they're pretty freaking good too.

@GCPcloud In conclusion: they claim over 500K customers and it's not very hard to understand why. This was a great user experience start to finish.