I’ve always been an AWS kind of guy not by choice, but just because every where I worked they had AWS.
Sure, there were few places who had Azure – cue the developers in the room grumbling about Microsoft .
Azure was doing something or other, but I just didn’t have any exposure to Azure or GCP. Obviously I knew GCP was out there, I mean it’s Google.
Don’t get me wrong – I have mad love for AWS, well I thought I did.
It just seemed so normal to me how everything is supposed to interconnect, but doesn’t easily, click through endless links to find the right setting, diving into the documentation only to come out feeling more confused, and don’t forget the welcome dashboard of endless offerings.
AWS is part of me. Still to this day if anyone says the word bucket to me I instantly think S3.
Oh and EMR the joy and the pain all in one neat little package, Athena my love hate relationship, the magic of lambdas, and Glue how I miss your simple but elegant powers of data manipulation.
I was fool.
I was living in a dark shady world and I didn’t even know it. If I had to relate this to a real life example it would be when I moved from South Africa to the UK and realised you weren’t suppose to live in fear with bars on your windows and electric fences around your property…
I’d had the thought to do some side projects in GCP over the years, but I’d always somehow get too busy or talk myself out of it as it’s not a good use of my time – I’m not getting any younger.
Well, I’ve finally moved to using GCP.
Why?
I took a new role and guess what, it’s a GCP shop. I jumped at the opportunity to work with some massively talented people on a new and exciting Data Engineering journey and just couldn’t pass it up. I was more than a little concerned about the GCP thing I was even a little hesitant, but I’m 6 weeks in and you know what?
GCP is awesome! for real.
It just seems to make life easier where as AWS just feels needlessly disjoined. In GCP land you’re actually suppose to focus on building useful and innovative solutions, not have to worry about unnecessary complexities.
Look – I’m not bashing AWS, it’s where it is, one because it was first and a game changer in many aspects. I’m all for the right tool for the right job that being said, based on my limited experience, I believe that GCP has certain advantages over AWS in a lot of areas.
BigQuery hands down one of GCP’s best offering I’ve used so far. Machine Learning and AI Capabilities seem at first glance well designed and innovative, talking with some engineers Kubernetes is champion in GCP, the Google Console is way better than AWS it just feels better to me, project vs accounts structure life made easy, and the CLI tools who knew it could be so easy to interface with your infrastructure.
Thats my take and first thoughts using GCP. I’m going to aim to give an update 6 months to see if my thoughts change, but right now I’m loving GCP.
Also found this post on Medium an entertaining read about why GCP is better than AWS. Check it out for some smiles.
Tim
