Strong "Dropbox is just FTP/rsync, who would need that" vibes.
Look, I'm an SRE by heart and mind. I love tinkering with Linux, have around 10 different physical boxes (mostly Pi/NUC sized) running various distros for the fun of it.
Just because I want to and can doesn't mean everyone should DIY everything. For a random developer working on a business thing, or a side project, any time not spent developing is a time that doesn't bring any value - it doesn't help them advance on their work.
Managing a VPS is not trivial. Yeah, maybe you can get away with unattended upgrades and FTPing PHP files to it, if you're lucky. If you're not you'll pick the wrong VPS provider whose datacenter will go up in flames. Hope you remembered to do backups of everything.
Many tutorials/docs, and hell, whole pieces of software are "now draw the rest of the owl" style, with terrible security and reliability defaults. You cannot expect a random developer to be aware of the intricacies of what it means to not bind to localhost only (reminder that e.g. MongoDB used to by default to bind to all interfaces, and start without a password, so you got an insecure unauthenticated DB on the internet by default; another reminder that Docker automatically port forwards all your Docker containers' exposed ports to all networks, so same thing).
Yeah, it's not that hard, but you need a ton of knowledge to know how not hard it is, and even then there are caveats and tricks depending on a ton of things.
> but most people also don't need to use AWS ... that are another wrapper/layer and charge excessively
Yeah, this is bullshit. Yes, AWS is a wrapper around infrastructure, but unless your needs start and end with "VM with storage and a network", having pretty much any piece of software you can desire available at an API call with a clear billing structure is pure magic. How long will it take you to set up a a reliable object store? Message broker? Trace storage? PostgreSQL? All reliable, backed up, regularly updated, properly monitored. How much time will you spend in maintenance on all of those? A random small project probably doesn't need all of those, but arguing "most people" don't need AWS is like arguing "most people" don't need fancy high level languages which are just wrappers and should just code everything in assembly.
I know my comment has that vibe and I get it. But I still am going to stick to the fact that infra is not the boogeyman that companies like Vercel etc want us to believe. Not saying they don't have a purpose but they are not the default answer in many cases. There has to be a middle ground if you don't want to be held hostage if these companies suddenly spike your price by 1000% (and they do).
Look, I'm an SRE by heart and mind. I love tinkering with Linux, have around 10 different physical boxes (mostly Pi/NUC sized) running various distros for the fun of it.
Just because I want to and can doesn't mean everyone should DIY everything. For a random developer working on a business thing, or a side project, any time not spent developing is a time that doesn't bring any value - it doesn't help them advance on their work.
Managing a VPS is not trivial. Yeah, maybe you can get away with unattended upgrades and FTPing PHP files to it, if you're lucky. If you're not you'll pick the wrong VPS provider whose datacenter will go up in flames. Hope you remembered to do backups of everything.
Many tutorials/docs, and hell, whole pieces of software are "now draw the rest of the owl" style, with terrible security and reliability defaults. You cannot expect a random developer to be aware of the intricacies of what it means to not bind to localhost only (reminder that e.g. MongoDB used to by default to bind to all interfaces, and start without a password, so you got an insecure unauthenticated DB on the internet by default; another reminder that Docker automatically port forwards all your Docker containers' exposed ports to all networks, so same thing).
Yeah, it's not that hard, but you need a ton of knowledge to know how not hard it is, and even then there are caveats and tricks depending on a ton of things.
> but most people also don't need to use AWS ... that are another wrapper/layer and charge excessively
Yeah, this is bullshit. Yes, AWS is a wrapper around infrastructure, but unless your needs start and end with "VM with storage and a network", having pretty much any piece of software you can desire available at an API call with a clear billing structure is pure magic. How long will it take you to set up a a reliable object store? Message broker? Trace storage? PostgreSQL? All reliable, backed up, regularly updated, properly monitored. How much time will you spend in maintenance on all of those? A random small project probably doesn't need all of those, but arguing "most people" don't need AWS is like arguing "most people" don't need fancy high level languages which are just wrappers and should just code everything in assembly.