> I went to give my 10 year old access to my old AWS account to play around […]
Why not give them an old machine and a Linux install USB?
That’s how I got started around that age (ok, with a CD instead of a USB, because it was the ‘00s), and I believe those skills are much more portable/generalizable (as in: if you know basic Linux, you can probably figure out basic AWS, but I’m not sure about the reverse).
You’d also be encouraging them to learn an open system with an open philosophy and a great community, which (IMHO) is a better starting point than a closed, corporate, for-profit ecosystem.
While I agree with your sentiment, as a competing theory if one really did want to teach cloud-native things then I'll point out that AWS is not the only cloud API in town: https://docs.openstack.org/devstack/2025.1/ -> https://opendev.org/openstack/devstack#start-a-dev-cloud
My recollection is that it runs fairly well in a 8GB VM so it should positively scream on any one of the $25 32GB Dell or Thinkpad devices from Green Citizen (e.g. https://www.ebay.com/itm/316679014997 )
I haven't personally tried to set up a local network of them (to demonstrate how "AZ failure" works) but I can't imagine why it wouldn't work fine
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obligatory reference: I downloaded Slackware over 28.8k onto all 32(?) floppies. I was thrilled out of my mind about learning how this "unix" thing works that I heard so much about