[j45]

The relatively low barrier to learn just a tiny bit of following a Linode or DO vps hardening & stack setup guide to get an ubuntu server going can go a very long way for development and prototyping environments.

It's gotten much, much easier, and is just another form of command line management, similar to the CLI framework tools with your preferred stack.

Once that first setup is done, similar to setting up a serverless environment, you are generally restoring backups of your base image and beginning projects from there.

It also immensely helps to learn about how to build something to scale that isn't completely reliant on the PaaS layer.