> Yup I've done the AWS Step Functions thing in the past, and it usually was about 90% wrangling with AWS and 10% writing code... we wanted to flip that ratio around (that's the goal at least!)
That was the final straw what led a friend and me to try to do what you’ve done.
We had started off using Zapier, and it’s horrendous objects & arrays handling, then moved on to Step Functions, then gave up on what we were initially doing to try and build a workable alternative.
With a cumulated grand total of 6 months of experience, we had no idea what we were getting into.
Now that AWS App Composer is a thing is this still an issue though? I felt that pain in the beginning, but once you get the hang of Step Functions it doesn't seem so bad. I never found a good alternative. My company is using Workato and it's a nightmare.
I should have mentioned this was more than 4 years ago. I remember having to use a Choice State to hack together my own looping mechanism.
Considering how much progress has been made since, and even though I haven’t gotten around to try App Composer for myself yet, I would tend to agree on both, with two caveats.
First, after Amplify, I am wary of any and all AWS "It just works™" claims.
It seems they have a hard time figuring out what "easy", "simple" and "straightforward" mean. And I say that as someone who very much appreciates Lambda, DynamoDB, EventBridge & co, and really wanted to like using Amplify.
Second, considering how expensive those can be to run, I would think twice before using them in a "high"-throughput and low margins scenario, and definitely appreciate there being alternatives.
Regarding Workato… I’d never heard of it. But the description they picked for Google and their landing page makes it clear who they’re appealing to and on what grounds. Sorry you have to deal with that.
Thanks! That's been our experience exactly and is the reason we're building it. The experience of AWS step functions on one extreme and Zapier on the other.
Oh, no. The other extreme wasn’t Step Functions. It was AWS Lambdas stringed together through DynamoDB Streams, SQS, SNS and S3 triggers, all obscurely tied together in a murky single-file yaml template deployed by JAWS (now the serverless framework, which has definitely made some much-appreciated improvements).
But something
- offering a clear visualisation
- and allowing to simply integrate with third-party APIs
- without having to deal with some’s quite obscure documentation
while at the same time
- easy to monitor & debug
- offering versioning
- allowing to just write a few lines instead of going through pointy-clicky drag-and-droppy mess
Yes, that was lacking. Reminds me of Zenaton (https://zenaton.com/). I can only wish you to be more successful than they were.
That was the final straw what led a friend and me to try to do what you’ve done.
We had started off using Zapier, and it’s horrendous objects & arrays handling, then moved on to Step Functions, then gave up on what we were initially doing to try and build a workable alternative.
With a cumulated grand total of 6 months of experience, we had no idea what we were getting into.
Anyway, the point is: thanks for making this.