[HN Gopher] AWS Icon Quiz
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AWS Icon Quiz
Author : whatsthenews
Score : 120 points
Date : 2023-08-31 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (awsiconquiz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (awsiconquiz.com)
| tristor wrote:
| I don't know that I should be angry or relieved that I only got
| half of them right. I've been working with AWS since it existed.
| baq wrote:
| [flagged]
| nnx wrote:
| AWS should add this to their Certifications offering.
| cdchn wrote:
| They should add a higher tier and the test is just this.
| fjuengermann wrote:
| Haha that's impossible. They all look the same
| cdchn wrote:
| Clearly one icon is six cubes and another is seven.
| paxys wrote:
| I have not used AWS at that level, but are these actually real?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Where do these icons come from they don't match what's used in
| the AWS console at all.
|
| So many of these are weird because I mostly know of their icons
| from the main console page which apparently doesn't match the
| ones this quiz is pulling from because it said the S3 icon isn't
| green and the IAM icon is a key. In the console it's green and an
| ID with a lock icon on it at least for me.
| baz00 wrote:
| They're used in the architecture diagrams and CloudFormation
| etc.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Ah ok. I've never used designer much at all so the fact they
| didn't match the AWS console version of things was really
| confusing. The first question is the 3 overlapping boxes with
| a play button which is supposedly the lambda icon but the
| console just has an orange box with a boxy white l so I was
| never going to get that.
|
| Wonder if OP could make a version of this that uses the
| console icons instead of the designer icons..
| xcskier56 wrote:
| I think they may be an older AWS icon set. I was just doing
| making an infrastructure diagram in lucid chart and the S3 icon
| was red and I recognized it so I got it right, but it doesn't
| match whats in the console now
| rtkwe wrote:
| The other person has it right. It's the icon set used in
| Cloudformation Designer. Which doesn't even match their
| current icon asset packet for Powerpoint, those generally
| seem to use the ones used in the console from my limited
| survey.
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/icons/
| ajonit wrote:
| This reminded me of AWS in plain English
| https://expeditedsecurity.com/aws-in-plain-english/
| paulddraper wrote:
| > SWF
|
| > Amazon EC2 Queue
|
| Nothing to do with EC2 but okay.
|
| More like Amazon Distributed Functions.
| morkalork wrote:
| https://i.redd.it/lzveac55vqb61.jpg
| mdaniel wrote:
| Yeah, ok, thanks "Entra" https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/azure/active-directory/fun... :rolling_eyes:
| morkalork wrote:
| Oh dear! I'm not even an azure user and I know what AD is
| and does. Why are they throwing out all their brand
| recognition for "Entra"??
| cdchn wrote:
| I correct people on this daily just because I think its
| hilarious they changed the name.
| whatsthenews wrote:
| This is a hilarious blog.
|
| Honestly, it's not just the icons but the names as well. A lot
| of them are completely unrelated to the product and make no
| sense
| taffer wrote:
| Some of these names are actually worse. For example they
| propose "Unlimited FTP Server" for what is essentially an HTTP-
| Blob-Storage.
| neoncontrails wrote:
| Amazon Drawer of Old Android Devices has a certain ring to it.
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| It's interesting to me that many of the non-AWS products they
| list under "it's like" have equally incomprehensible names.
|
| API Gateway
|
| Should have been called: API Proxy
|
| It's like: 3Scale
|
| SNS
|
| Should have been called: Amazon Messenger
|
| It's like: UrbanAirship, Twilio
|
| Kinesis
|
| Should have been called: Amazon High-Throughput
|
| It's like: Kafka
|
| (It always gets me that someone actually named a large software
| product "Kafka".)
| commandlinefan wrote:
| It makes me wonder too how many of these actually _are_ the
| "it's like". For example, I know that Elasticache actually is
| redis or memcached... makes me wonder if Kinesis isn't
| actually Kafka rebranded.
| remus wrote:
| I guess the point is not that other companies also have
| products with unrelated names, but if you happen to be
| familiar with Y then saying "Amazon x is just Amazon's
| version of Y" is very succinct.
| ktm5j wrote:
| Most of these are really funny, but I feel like they should
| have just left out the reasonable ones. There's enough of them
| that it kind of kills the humor after a certain amount of
| "actually this one is fine" imo.
| ranman wrote:
| Now do it with the 2021 icons
| GabeIsko wrote:
| Didnt they retire these in favor of the vector icons?
| tqkxzugoaupvwqr wrote:
| I got 2/20 after randomly guessing.
| nathell wrote:
| Pretty much the only AWS logo I can recognize immediately is this
| one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_Electoral_Action
| kodjima33 wrote:
| just realized I'm so bad at AWS
| srvmshr wrote:
| I tried my level best and got 2/20. I repeated with random
| guesses and got 5/20. I have used AWS on-and-off since 2018.
|
| AWS icons are next to Egyptian hieroglyphs in difficulty. Google
| iconography isn't so bad (but bad enough still.)
| cdchn wrote:
| This is making me feel like I should turn in my Certified AWS
| DevOps Engineer badge.
| alexy201 wrote:
| The person that designed these icons should be paid less. Maybe
| Bezos did it himself
| EricButton wrote:
| Amazon's strong suit has never been design apparently...
| rob74 wrote:
| That applies not only to icon design, but also to UX design
| and some other types of design too...
| p410n3 wrote:
| I have red green color blindness (deuteranopia) and i have no
| idea if my answer is right or wrong on until i change my monitor
| settings to high saturation. (I usually turn that off because it
| messes a lot with other colors)
| kreas wrote:
| ^+1
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Does it show which one is correct when you get it wrong? It
| would be cool to see what all the others were too.
| jedberg wrote:
| I want to take this quiz, but why do I have to click three times
| to get to the next question instead of one?
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| Perhaps it's to match the class-leading usability of the AWS
| web console.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It's to mirror the AWS user experience.
| EricButton wrote:
| Looks like i'm a noob
| bilalq wrote:
| I've contributed and/or led development on at least 4 different
| AWS consoles and have used AWS every day for the last 10 years,
| with 8 of those working at AWS. Still only got 6 right on the
| quiz.
|
| That said, AWS is transitioning away from those 3D logos. I just
| wish they'd transition away from Amazon vs AWS name prefix
| confusion. I've read the internal notes on why they do that, but
| the reasoning never clicked for me and I still have no idea
| without looking it up.
| pests wrote:
| Are you allowed to share the reasons for the different name
| prefixes?
| malfist wrote:
| AWS = things that are used with other things.
|
| Amazon = things that can be used independently.
|
| I.E, Amazon Simple Email Service, AWS CloudFormation
| blandai wrote:
| Loll makes me feel like a bad engineer
| unregistereddev wrote:
| It's possibly a sign that you are a good engineer. If you are
| using infrastructure-as-code, whether that is terraform or
| cloudformation, you are used to looking at a yaml or json file
| that does not include icons. If you have automated everything
| to the point that you rarely need to log into the AWS console,
| you probably don't regularly see these icons.
| marktani wrote:
| my score was 5/20, every question in this quiz is uncanny :D
| pashabitz wrote:
| I hope this is made by an obsessive graphic designer at AWS who's
| lost one too many arguments.
| rurp wrote:
| This was hilarious. Some of descriptions are great. "Dried
| arterial blood" is a nice vivid color descriptor.
|
| It really puts into context how meaningless these icons are. I
| log into AWS all the time and did terrible on this quiz (4/20),
| despite having seen some of these icons hundreds of times at
| least.
| bagels wrote:
| Should they even have any icons? Most of them don't really convey
| meaning, and there are so many, and many similar (rectangular
| prisms in different orientations), that it's impossible to
| remember them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| They need icons so that the utterly incomprehensible
| architecture diagrams that mostly would convey little useful
| information even if you recognized the symbols drawn by
| architects for administrative rather than technical reasons
| have the facade of a standardized, consistent language.
| jedberg wrote:
| I've been an AWS Hero for a decade, and I only got 5 out of 20
| (and I was only sure on 1, the other 4 were guesses).
|
| Obviously this is a joke to point out how useless the icons are,
| but I'd have thought working with them for so long I'd at least
| know a few of them.
| flying_sheep wrote:
| That's why I think Adobe has made the smart move. They simply use
| English as the icon, color as the impression.
|
| You can guess via the English if you are unfamiliar with the
| icon. And easy to spot via the color if you already know the
| icon.
|
| Let's say if I forget the characters in the Illustrator icon. But
| I can recognize the icon is Illustrator because of its orange
| color.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I think Microsoft was even better, at least on the number of
| users that recognized the blue W for making documents the e
| icon to get online, etc. That's how my mom did it, but she
| would have no idea what Ps, Il, Ae, would mean
| globally wrote:
| gotta love aws ux
| akira2501 wrote:
| The only reason I can play this game is because "Icons with
| Labels" is impossible to deal with in the AWS console. I _really_
| wish I could just set the labels myself.
|
| "AWS Simple Email Service." Were you worried I would forget it's
| an AWS service? Or worried that I wouldn't remember it's simple,
| or a service? Do you offer any other email service? Can I please
| just rename the label to "SES"?
|
| First world cloud console problems, I guess.
| mdaniel wrote:
| and then there's "flip a coin" about whether it's "AWS Foo" or
| "Amazon Foo". I think I once read that Amazon Foos were things
| that were used internally, too, and AWS Foos were things only
| sold to pay for rocket fuel and yachts (I kid, I kid; paying
| for all those Graviton fabs is some serious $$$ too)
| paulddraper wrote:
| Oddly, https://expeditedsecurity.com/aws-in-plain-english/
| continues that AWS/Amazon schizophrenia.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My favorite is "Amazon Web Services Systems Manager Session
| Manager".
| mdaniel wrote:
| You surprised me for a second and I thought you had found
| an example of where they actually _wrote out_ Amazon Web
| Services in the title of something and I was going to claim
| they must get paid by the letter or something, but no, it's
| just "AWS Systems Manager ..."
| https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-
| manager/latest/userguide...
|
| Still, yes, a good r/TitleGore find there :-D
| hooverd wrote:
| I think a Managed NAT Gateway or two ought to cover those.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Do you offer any other email service
|
| AWS WorkMail is a (different kind of) email services, and AWS
| Simple Notification Service has email delivery functionality.
| So, yes?
| hooverd wrote:
| It's not a real AWS service unless there's a way to run
| containers with it.
| KrishnaMadala wrote:
| Cool quiz feels like it might be a psy op from
| https://www.antimetal.com/
| spaidenbeta wrote:
| Lol, we use them for our AWS. Sounds like something they would
| do
| joshuawilde wrote:
| Made it about 1 question in before I realized it was over my head
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Now if yEd had a way to search in the icon library... the way
| services are grouped is completely incomprehensible.
| scop wrote:
| > 5/20
|
| I use a variety of AWS services every day. I actually got a
| higher score than I was expecting.
| baz00 wrote:
| Oh hell I have spent the last decade working with AWS and I still
| have no idea what any of the icons are. They are all complete
| shit. Literally the worst.
|
| To be fair I can't remember half the product names other than the
| core ones either. Elastic Banana or whatever. Maybe Dynamo
| Donkey. I just don't know any more.
|
| Edit: I'm also an AWS Architect Professional or whatever it's
| called now. Shows how a monkey can pass the certs eh?
| hughesjj wrote:
| I worked at AWS for 7 years and only got 1/20
| giaour wrote:
| I was the primary maintainer for one of the services they
| asked about, and I still got that question wrong. 4/20 for
| me, but three were lucky guesses
| dylan604 wrote:
| are you saying 420 is reason for not doing well?
| input_sh wrote:
| 3/20 by purely guessing, out of the big 3 cloud providers
| it's the only one I have no experience with.
|
| Shockingly, one of those I got right was "select 4 out of 6".
| askiiart wrote:
| That's almost impressive; you did 3x worse than random!
|
| Edit: nope, I have no idea. I forgot the number of options
| and type of questions varies quite a bit.
| [deleted]
| paulddraper wrote:
| To be fair, the pareto principle applies....80% of services are
| only relevant 20% of the time. If that.
| baz00 wrote:
| Worth noting that also from experience that applies to the
| amount of effort they put into services. Most of the non-core
| ancillary services are buggy garbage. I'm wondering if we're
| going to cause an integer overflow on the support ticket
| system the way we're going.
| alexy201 wrote:
| Is this a marketing campaign for Antimetal? If so it's a great
| idea
| janestevenson80 wrote:
| I'm convinced the AWS icons were made by people who don't realize
| how helpful names and icons can be for devs
| hbn wrote:
| If you pass this, a team of medical professionals will be sent to
| your home to peacefully euthanize you, as it is the only ethical
| choice to end your suffering.
| [deleted]
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| I sense a business opportunity: Euthanasia as a Service. EaaS.
| With an API.
| cdchn wrote:
| The real question is: can I configure it with a
| CloudFormation stack?
| redserk wrote:
| No but a beta Terraform provider is available. Just don't
| forget to import the existing resource lest strange things
| happen.
| benburleson wrote:
| Ahem, did you mean OpenTF?
| cdchn wrote:
| Terraform doesn't make me want to use EaaS though.
| lijok wrote:
| Can't wait until Corey Quinn finds a way run a container on
| this one
| gazarullz wrote:
| I've heard google has an alpha version of this for internal
| use only.
|
| From time to time they let it run loose to clean up their
| products.
| thiht wrote:
| What should the icon look like?
| archgoon wrote:
| [dead]
| bemusedthrow75 wrote:
| I've got this great idea involving three small floating
| boxes.
| [deleted]
| gordian-not wrote:
| Sometimes it feels like having 2000 products with obscure names
| and overlapping responsibilities is the end goal
| mdaniel wrote:
| I hope you got to see when the AWS InfiniDash (meme?hoax?) went
| around ... good times
| nkcmr wrote:
| > Dried arterial blood red
|
| ... Horrifying
|
| I got 3/20, because I've never used AWS professionally.
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| I got 3/20 and use AWS professionally
| psanford wrote:
| Is there no way to see the correct answers after finishing the
| quiz?
| nikofoto86 wrote:
| I actually think that AWS icons are pretty decent. If you've used
| GCP, you know what I'm talking about
| tehbeard wrote:
| Not used GCP...
|
| Is it as bad as the "Google" folder on an android?
| dijit wrote:
| GCP has a mix of "that makes sense" (scheduler, run, compute,
| spanner) to "I can see where they were going" (memorystore,
| speech) with a _smidge_ of: "that doesn't make any
| sense/just a fun design that isn't meaningful" (anthos).
|
| Lots of icons are dots or squares that are connected, which
| of course isn't helpful because that's what nodes in a
| network actually _are_ in all circumstances.
|
| GCP is (un)fortunately saved by it's relatively low product
| offering (by AWS's standards at least).
| karaterobot wrote:
| As a designer, I just want to say that if your instinct is to rag
| on these symbols for being incomprehensible, go ahead and try
| your hand at one or two. It may be humbling.
|
| Illustrating abstract concepts that are similar to other, related
| abstract concepts is extremely difficult. Remember that it's got
| to be legible in a footprint of a couple dozen pixels on a side.
| When you're done, make sure it isn't close enough to any other
| AWS product symbols that customers would get confused. Also, run
| it by a committee of people who aren't designers, and are proud
| of that fact. If they are in a senior position, attempt to
| integrate their feedback, no matter how idiotic, into your
| design, because nobody's going to fight for a little thing like
| an icon symbol.
|
| I stopped making logos, it's a really difficult and thankless
| job. Designing apps for complex use cases is way simpler.
| xuhu wrote:
| Not a fan of either, but Azure icons look like actual things:
| http://code.benco.io/icon-collection/azure-icons/
|
| The AWS icons seem procedurally generated based on a hash of
| each concept's name.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Yeah, limiting yourself to minor variations of a 3x3x3 cube
| is pretty rough.
|
| GCP does a nice job of strong brand consistency while still
| maintaining decent intuition [1].
|
| [1] https://www.turbogeek.co.uk/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/02/word-...
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(page generated 2023-08-31 23:00 UTC)