Adventures with AWS

Welcome to our coding blog (or the gradual process of a journalist learning how to code).

This week I discovered AWS (Amazon Web Services) which I always knew was how Bezos made his billions, but hadn’t fully appreciated. When I think of Bezos I usually think of a website where you can order stuff to be delivered to your house. For more go to our coding blog.

I code on a Mac in Python using PyCharm CE (a free IDE, an Integrated Development Environment).

So, all the code is stored on my laptop, but then if I close my machine the program I’ve been building can’t be accessed by anyone. When I asked ChatGPT about this, it told me that I need to put it on a service like AWS. This is a machine that exists in the cloud that you rent and it means your program will always run regardless of what you are doing.

First, you create an AWS account and then an “instance” which is always running. And then a “volume” which is where you upload all your python files (you can do this using an FTP program like Cyberduck). The sticking point is when I’ve been coding I’ve just gone nuts installing millions of python packages on my machine (these are like extensions of Python so it can perform certain actions). Now your program is going to be remote you need to find out what you installed and make sure they are all running up in the cloud as well.

For more details on how to do this more thoroughly, look out for our training workshops.