[HN Gopher] Getting Started with AWS Amplify Flutter
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       Getting Started with AWS Amplify Flutter
        
       Author : voidmain0001
       Score  : 49 points
       Date   : 2021-02-25 14:30 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (docs.amplify.aws)
 (TXT) w3m dump (docs.amplify.aws)
        
       | whalesalad wrote:
       | I try to avoid Amplify as much as possible.
        
       | matchbok wrote:
       | Don't use Flutter lol.
        
         | joezydeco wrote:
         | Anyone that hitches their wagon to a Google embedded framework
         | gets what they deserve.
        
       | simlevesque wrote:
       | I don't want more Amplify platforms, I want them to fix the
       | existing issues. Their github is filled with them.
       | 
       | There is so much pain with Amplify. They don't listen to anybody.
        
         | jjoonathan wrote:
         | This is the Amazon version of the Google Graveyard. They never
         | retire the product, but they never really fix the bugs either.
        
           | saurik wrote:
           | This sounds much worse, though, as they are clearly still
           | working on it, but only things that make good sounding
           | announcements.
        
         | snyp wrote:
         | 100%. Their existing SDKs are so broken! I don't understand how
         | they can ignore fundamental issues that absolutely make it
         | impossible to use the SDK.
        
         | vincentmarle wrote:
         | > There is so much pain with Amplify. They don't listen to
         | anybody.
         | 
         | Indeed. Amplify sounded great on paper and I was really excited
         | to use it in my latest project but it's simply not living up to
         | its promise.
         | 
         | I spent one month trying to get Sign in with Apple to work with
         | Amplify + Cognito.
         | 
         | Frustrated and annoyed, I gave Firebase a chance. I had it
         | working in 40 minutes.
         | 
         | Now the entire project is using Firebase.
        
           | random5634 wrote:
           | Same here - and I like AWS and am on AWS for the most part. I
           | never figured out Apple / iOS sign in. Their ECS container /
           | S3 etc stuff works totally fine.
        
           | samsgro wrote:
           | Had the exact same experience. Excited about Amplify, but ran
           | into bugs that hadn't been fixed for months blocking
           | AmplifyJS social login from working as documented.
           | 
           | Switched to Firebase, and it all just worked.
        
         | tus89 wrote:
         | Yep. The Amplify JS still doesn't handle clock skew correctly
         | for API calls after years of people complaining. I am still not
         | sure they understand the problem.
        
         | 0xB31B1B wrote:
         | 100%,
         | 
         | I hate their new releases, it makes me feel duped. My team has
         | so much pain working with amplify. The very basics of their API
         | functionality and lambda layers are extremely broken and it
         | seems like it will be impossible to scale beyond a team of 5
         | people without insane conflicts.
        
           | simlevesque wrote:
           | > it seems like it will be impossible to scale beyond a team
           | of 5 people without insane conflicts.
           | 
           | Tell me about it. We have to use different versions of the
           | CLI to push different type of changes to the schema. It is
           | insane.
        
         | whoevercares wrote:
         | I guess one of the reason is fixing issues won't get anyone
         | promoted beyond L5
        
           | simlevesque wrote:
           | Well until then I'll whine under every Amplify post for bad
           | PR since this might affect promotions.
        
           | chem83 wrote:
           | It's called promotion-driven-development. It's a quite
           | popular methodology on big tech these days ;)
        
       | offtop5 wrote:
       | Has AWS caught up to firebase yet , we went with Firebase as a
       | backend for our Flutter web project and it's been a dream.
       | 
       | Web hosting , auth, Nosql data storage !
        
         | snyp wrote:
         | It is so far behind! It can't even handle social login
         | reliably.
        
         | cwhiz wrote:
         | I really like Firebase but for me it is way too risky for
         | anything but personal projects. Vendor lock on the entire
         | stack.
         | 
         | Amplify tried to compete with Firebase by glueing together a
         | bunch of disparate AWS services. It has less overall vendor
         | lock, but you are still functionally tied to an AWS service.
         | Again, for me, too risky.
         | 
         | If you're comfortable with the vendor lock, Amplify is just not
         | even close to Firebase. Amplify feels like some hacky side
         | project in comparison to Firebase.
        
           | gman83 wrote:
           | I don't really understand why people say this. I'm using
           | Firebase in my Flutter app but I've completely abstracted out
           | the implementation into service classes. The business logic
           | just calls my service auth, fetch data, etc... doesn't know
           | anything about firebase. I could swap Firebase out for
           | another provider no problem, no lock in.
        
             | cwhiz wrote:
             | No problem? Come on. The entire Firebase stack is closed
             | source, and only available through Google. It's not like
             | you can take your Firebase back-end and move it to Digital
             | Ocean. If you want to go elsewhere you have to export
             | everything, and put it somewhere else, with some other
             | technology stack.
             | 
             | Your idea of vendor lock is radically different than mine.
        
           | offtop5 wrote:
           | It depends, if your company has the money to hire a dedicated
           | backend programmer then Firebase wouldn't be needed.
           | 
           | But if you're trying to solo develop or working on an
           | extremely small team Firebase can do a ton of the heavy
           | lifting. I can put a server up ,but I find backend
           | programming to be very boring
        
         | randomsearch wrote:
         | Would love to hear others experiences. I've used both firebase
         | and amplify.
         | 
         | My concerns with firebase are: Google kills products at a whim,
         | security rules are horrible.
         | 
         | Amplify seems more powerful so more likely to work long term,
         | directly uses AWS "full strength".
         | 
         | Concerns with Amplify: their npm libraries seem to be a
         | colossal mess (they have old and new libraries that have to be
         | partially used in tandem, and the docs use a sprinkling of
         | each), plenty of odd bugs seems to crop up, the DataStore cache
         | confuses me, idiomatic usage is not obvious - the fact that
         | it's composed of so many layers means it is not obvious which
         | level of abstraction to interact with, and CLIs have flaws that
         | seem blindingly obvious in design, which makes me worry about
         | quality overall.
         | 
         | Should I stick with Amplify of return back to warm and fuzzy
         | firebase (before Google dump it at random) and risk its
         | limitations?
        
           | offtop5 wrote:
           | I would say either use Firebase or roll your own ( a open
           | source self-hosted framework would fit this).
           | 
           | Firebase seems to be one of Google's stable projects, so I
           | love it. I've used it for at least 4 years. I'm only using it
           | as a hobbyist, so take all my experiences with a grain of
           | salt.
        
           | reilly3000 wrote:
           | Google hired the firebase team, integrated their product into
           | the platform and completely rebuilt the DB with Firestore,
           | and made Firebase into their mBaaS powerhouse that supports
           | hundreds of thousands of apps. Its not some free product
           | that's drawing a lot of resources, it's their entire mobile
           | app developer strategy, and under many contracts to maintain
           | the service.
        
       | msoad wrote:
       | Beating a dead horse never works. Let's try beating TWO dead
       | horses!
        
       | stefan_ wrote:
       | Of course the "getting started" example is "here is how you wire
       | up this button to send an analytics event".
       | 
       | Is anybody looking at all this trash data?
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-25 23:02 UTC)