[Azsy]

> $20/mo would have got you enough to get started.

What? Have you forgotten what your first time was like?

There is a huge difference between thinking:

> "I build my first shitty website, if i leave my PC on everybody in the world can use it. Who knows what will happen?"

And instead being required to go:

> "I'll spend 20$ a month to maybe entertain a couple of people for a couple of minutes by using someone else's hardware"

[fy20]

Well the first site I hosted was on shared hosting for free. I had dial up, so hosting it on my own PC was not very practical. I didn't know about server administration, but knew how to write PHP, so this was perfect for me.

When I got a job in a supermarket at 16 earning £4/hr I was able to afford a VPS, so bought that and learnt how to administer servers. To me it was a worth-while expense as a fun hobby and education. Today you can get a more powerful VPS for $5/mo, of even free with things like AWS free tier.

I'm not sure that's really applicable to Zuck and Co (it wasn't just him when it launched) though - someone at Harvard with wealthy parents.

[compsciphd]

if your PC only consumes 50w (somewhat low for a desktop). and your power is 20c a KWH (a little high on average, but not crazy high, though perhaps 0 in a dorm room). you'll be spending $7-$8 a month just on electricity. So it's not "free" to run it on your PC. now, if you view that your PC runs 24/7 anyways, perhaps (much like the dorm room case) the marginal cost is 0. I'm simply making the case that it might not be, and it could very well be a significant %age of the linode cost.

[evilos]

But it feels basically free which is the important thing vs having to set up billing. $20 a month is a lot if you're a teenager with limited or no income.

[southerntofu]

It's not entirely free, but the cost is shared with other usage of your computer, and you have much more resources at your disposal.

Then and now, any second hand hardware will yield more computing power than cheap VMs you can rent. (of course you can rent a dedicated server with 32 cores and 128GB RAM nowadays, this doesn't change that entry level offers are very limited on resources compared to what you can easily find AFK)

[yyyk]

There's a huge difference alright.

It was never a good idea to host a public site on one's personal computer with all the sensitive personal data on it where it could be hacked or DDOSed. Even when IPv4 addresses were easy to get it was a very bad idea.

When you factor buying a separate server, 20$ a month doesn't sound too bad.

[dijit]

I’d argue that it’s a huge barrier to innovation.

Most people getting started are not going to understand systems administration enough to set up a server like that. But they can run software locally.

One of the first projects I was ever a part of was a “WAMP” machine (Windows Apache MySQL & PHP) running Nuke Evolution forum software. I learned a lot from that and would never do it again but it was a useful project for some people and I learned a lot by patching around the source files and learning about MySQL enough to make backups and improvements and so on.

Being able to put up a simple service is but only one of the reasons to be publicly addressable, P2P is also important (things like games, VoIP) but $20 for a VPS is no small barrier.

Not for someone getting started.

[southerntofu]

> It was never a good idea to host a public site on one's personal computer

You could run it in a VM, which is equivalent to what your 20$ host is doing. Or you could run it on a separate machine. Or you can run it on the same machine which was common back in the day... if you use a reputable distro and apply updates regularly then it's really not a concern (i can't remember myself or anyone i know hacked through vulnerable packages, except for Worpress but that's precisely because it's not packaged by Debian).

> 20$ a month doesn't sound too bad

Doesn't it? I guess it's a matter of age and class and nationality. If you're too young to earn money, it's a barrier. If you're in the lower classes of your country, 20$/month can be a lot (that's like food for 30 days for one person). If you're in a "poor" country (i.e. neo-colony depleted of its resources by global north countries), 20$/month can even be considered a decent monthly income.

> buying a separate server

That's the thing. You usually don't have to buy it. It's old hardware lying around or that someone will donate for the purpose of running fun projects.

[yyyk]

>Doesn't it? I guess it's a matter of age and class and nationality. If you're too young to earn money, it's a barrier. If you're in the lower classes of your country, 20$/month can be a lot

I was comparing the payment to buying or operating a server (even a free old server has costs, e.g. for electricity). In truth, a proper modern comparison should be to a free plan from one of the cloud providers which is likely to be 0/month.

[southerntofu]

> I was comparing the payment to buying or operating a server (even a free old server has costs, e.g. for electricity)

Sure, but if the machine is already running, it's free. Or if you can stick it in a cupboard at work/university, it's free.

> 0/month

is there actually free cloud hosting? don't they ask for your credit card first before they offer you "credits"?

[yyyk]

>Sure, but if the machine is already running, it's free.

It still has costs for admin and electricity (via extra CPU load), though I grant these could be marginal.

>Or if you can stick it in a cupboard at work/university, it's free.

This is using someone else's resources, rather dubiously ethical. I suspect IT is going to have a fit when they find out - assuming they didn't block the relevant ports in the first place.

>is there actually free cloud hosting? don't they ask for your credit card first before they offer you "credits"?

There are free plans on Azure/AWS/GCP. Asking for credit card data does not mean you are being charged, I suspect it's really more about identifying users.

It's possible to set up free plans without credit card if one has some other id (e.g. Azure's free plans via MSDN). A prepaid card should work as well.

[lifeslikethis]

Honestly, I think self-hosted is the way to go. Most cloud hosting services are scams, and with self-hosted you have full control over the system.

[TheOtherHobbes]

I have a friend who was running a successful dating site over ADSL from a spare PC in a spare bedroom in London. This was in the early 2000s. She sold it a few years later for £££££££s.

This was considered a sophisticated operation because in the late 90s and early 00s basic hosting and email were often included with consumer Internet packages.

Server hacking and DDOSing weren't quite the organised thing they are today.

[oauea]

When I was a teen I could definitely not afford 20$ a month on something like that. I could barely afford my MMO subscription!