I'm not sure what your classification of "old-timer" is with how it compares to me but I would think of myself as an old-timer as Gen X.
I feel like there's another term for what you're thinking of but I cannot come up with what it is.
Self-hosting definitely was locally hosted on your own hardware back when hosting providers like Linode, Digital Ocean, AWS, etc existed or were as customizable.
Even corporations "self-host" GitHub Enterprise or Gitlab when they set it up on AWS. Self-host just means you're not reliant on creator of the application to host it for you and manage the server.
There are certainly advantages and disadvantages to self-hosting on your own hardware, as there are to using a hosting provider.
You reckon you could even use Github to archive some small things? If Github or GitLab suffers, then some parts of the internet will also have problems, correct?
Legitimately asking, is there any way for Github to go around searching for "no-code" content through countless private repositories?
I don't think Github could read your self-hosted Github instance unless there's some code in there that calls back home or provides home the ability to search code in your instance.
In the beginning, self-hosting was seen as completely local partially because there were no good options for hosting on a server, so that's probably where it sort became synonymous with hosting it in your home.
I feel like there's another term for what you're thinking of but I cannot come up with what it is.
Self-hosting definitely was locally hosted on your own hardware back when hosting providers like Linode, Digital Ocean, AWS, etc existed or were as customizable.
Even corporations "self-host" GitHub Enterprise or Gitlab when they set it up on AWS. Self-host just means you're not reliant on creator of the application to host it for you and manage the server.
There are certainly advantages and disadvantages to self-hosting on your own hardware, as there are to using a hosting provider.