20 Years on AWS and Never Not My Job

Colin Percival · 11 Apr 2026

Colin Percival did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
End-to-end cryptographic signing of requests and responses is more secure than relying on transport-layer encryption like TLS alone.

Their wordsWith requests going over TLS it is obviously less critical now, but end-to-end signing is always going to be better than transport-layer security.
Our reading
Eventually Known Consistency is a better theoretical model for distributed systems than plain eventual consistency, even though it's harder to reason about.

Their wordsbut I still think the model of Eventually Known Consistency is the better theoretical model even if it is harder for users to reason about.
Our reading
Exceptions are an inherently poor way of handling errors because they make bugs harder to spot on casual code inspection.

Their wordsexceptions are an inherently poor way of handling errors because they make it easier to write bugs which won't be immediately obvious on casual code inspection

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The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.