My company picked Azure. So I work with it every day and it is extremely painful to deploy anything that’s not a dotnet application on azure dev ops. One time the app service deployment pipeline just silently failed while trying to build our app. We only found out our new code didn’t deploy when someone asked about the new features expected to go out.
The management portal is super slow, every time you click a button it’s basically a roll of the dice whether the action will work or not.
And as with most things Microsoft these days there are reams of docs detailing every single feature, and none of it fucking works as described.
I will say, if you just want to deploy a quick app from VSCode from your local machine or whatever, it works great. But if you need anything off the golden path it quickly becomes frustrating.
I have worked with AWS, Google and Azure. Google Cloud has the worst UI of them, it slow, broken and just horrible. UI in AWS may be faster than Azure, but overal layout and organization feels a lot better in Azure. I would strongly recommend clearly separating builds from deployments, if you don't want bad surprises. In the age of containers there should really be no difference in how, where or what you deploy.
Don't forget the part where blades will often be different from what's described in the docs, because Microsoft loves changing/renaming shit for no reason.
I do have to give them credit. The cli is pretty good. And Azure Storage Explorer is probably the best Microsoft app I’ve ever used. So props to the team who made that.
Thanks, sorry for my tone yesterday. It was the end of a long frustrating work day.
Azure Linux does look interesting, thank you for working on it. Fedora is a great choice as a base image. Having a Fedora based distro designed to work well with WSL would be amazing! As a base image for apps though I'm curious how you manage the 6month release cycle. Are you planning on expended support, or would people using it need to upgrade every 6 months. I think the appeal of a Debian base is we only need to think about big upgrades every 2 years.
A few bits of Azure feedback I can think of now. Probably not directly related to what you work on, but just some of my experiences working with Azure for the last year.
1. The CLI is good, I think maintaining feature parity between the CLI and portal is really helpful and allows us to integrate with our internal infra more easily. Azure CLI is really the best part working with the service.
2. The management portal is really flaky. Like unknown error messages pop up when clicking on deployment logs. Sometimes the SSH or log tail functions just don't load at all and overall the experience just feels sluggish. I'm really not sure what can be done about this but I've been moving to the CLI just because the web interface is frustrating to work with.
3. The Microsoft documentation is really verbose and difficult to navigate in my opinion. Like we were looking in to hosting a Teams bot and those docs are full of emoji and full page articles like 'why did we make an SDK?'. I have to jump around several pages to get to what I need and even then the code examples in the docs are not actually in sync with the current version of the SDK library. It feels like AI was just set loose to write as much as possible. I think the problem is the information density of much of the documentation is very low. Maybe that's something that can be addressed going forward.
Just doesn’t match my experience at all. AWS isnsuper complex but stuff works. GCP has clearly the nicest interface but not every feature that AWS has. Azure is complex, slow, hard to use and incredibly opaque. No way I’ll use it again out of my own free will.
My company picked Azure. So I work with it every day and it is extremely painful to deploy anything that’s not a dotnet application on azure dev ops. One time the app service deployment pipeline just silently failed while trying to build our app. We only found out our new code didn’t deploy when someone asked about the new features expected to go out.
The management portal is super slow, every time you click a button it’s basically a roll of the dice whether the action will work or not.
And as with most things Microsoft these days there are reams of docs detailing every single feature, and none of it fucking works as described.
I will say, if you just want to deploy a quick app from VSCode from your local machine or whatever, it works great. But if you need anything off the golden path it quickly becomes frustrating.
I have worked with AWS, Google and Azure. Google Cloud has the worst UI of them, it slow, broken and just horrible. UI in AWS may be faster than Azure, but overal layout and organization feels a lot better in Azure. I would strongly recommend clearly separating builds from deployments, if you don't want bad surprises. In the age of containers there should really be no difference in how, where or what you deploy.
Don't forget the part where blades will often be different from what's described in the docs, because Microsoft loves changing/renaming shit for no reason.
Ditch the VScode virus before it hurts. LLM based action infiltration will rise in 2026 but rest assured, that doesn't work in NeoVIM/VIM.
For sure, I don’t use VSCode and that’s part of what makes Azure so hard to use. All their stuff is built to support VSCode first.
I like working with the cli instead of the portal. But even the cli is clunky.
I do have to give them credit. The cli is pretty good. And Azure Storage Explorer is probably the best Microsoft app I’ve ever used. So props to the team who made that.
pro tip: build a VM in azure and run your management portal from there. I find it a lot more reliable
Would love to hear more about your frustration and how it can be fixed. Message me at my nick @microsoft.com please.
Thanks, sorry for my tone yesterday. It was the end of a long frustrating work day.
Azure Linux does look interesting, thank you for working on it. Fedora is a great choice as a base image. Having a Fedora based distro designed to work well with WSL would be amazing! As a base image for apps though I'm curious how you manage the 6month release cycle. Are you planning on expended support, or would people using it need to upgrade every 6 months. I think the appeal of a Debian base is we only need to think about big upgrades every 2 years.
A few bits of Azure feedback I can think of now. Probably not directly related to what you work on, but just some of my experiences working with Azure for the last year.
1. The CLI is good, I think maintaining feature parity between the CLI and portal is really helpful and allows us to integrate with our internal infra more easily. Azure CLI is really the best part working with the service.
2. The management portal is really flaky. Like unknown error messages pop up when clicking on deployment logs. Sometimes the SSH or log tail functions just don't load at all and overall the experience just feels sluggish. I'm really not sure what can be done about this but I've been moving to the CLI just because the web interface is frustrating to work with.
3. The Microsoft documentation is really verbose and difficult to navigate in my opinion. Like we were looking in to hosting a Teams bot and those docs are full of emoji and full page articles like 'why did we make an SDK?'. I have to jump around several pages to get to what I need and even then the code examples in the docs are not actually in sync with the current version of the SDK library. It feels like AI was just set loose to write as much as possible. I think the problem is the information density of much of the documentation is very low. Maybe that's something that can be addressed going forward.
It isn't.
I have done projects across Azure, AWS and GCP, and without a doubt would always pick Azure.
AWS is a master in complexity, one almost requires a PhD in cloud infrastructure to make sense of how everything works.
GCP is the usual "talk to the bots" when something happens, unless it gets escalated.
Azure can be as complicated as AWS, or one can enjoy the nice GUI tooling similar in spirit to VS or InteliJ like confort.
Even for timesharing like workflows with a cloud shell and Web IDE, it appears AWS and GCP take pride on being a clunky bad experience.
Just doesn’t match my experience at all. AWS isnsuper complex but stuff works. GCP has clearly the nicest interface but not every feature that AWS has. Azure is complex, slow, hard to use and incredibly opaque. No way I’ll use it again out of my own free will.
We've been through the big three, starting with AWS, then GCP and now Azure. I long for the days of AWS and GCP.
Well then we have to agree to disagree, I will keep Azure on top of my list, AWS second and GCP last.