[iuvcaw]

The HN community 1) likes building and hacking, and 2) has nostalgia for old technology. This makes them feel a lot of affinity toward "doing things themselves" -- server infrastructure, running desktop linux, avoiding dependencies in their code.

The reality, though, is that the steady march of progress encourages us to outsource what we can to people who are better at the thing that is auxiliary to what we do. I don't grow food because I'm bad at growing. I don't repair my car because I'm bad at auto repair.

I do build software, and my company builds a very specific type of software to solve very specific problems. I'm happy to focus on that, because that's how we make money. Other people are much better at building infrastructure than I am, and so I let them do it for me. If there comes a time when the cloud offerings are either worse than what I can build or too expensive, then I trust someone else will come along and fill the gap in the market before it becomes worthwhile for me to do it.

[qeternity]

> I don't grow food because I'm bad at growing. I don't repair my car because I'm bad at auto repair.

These analogies are really bad. It’s not as if this is binary. Nobody is suggesting you fab your own chips or build your own data centers.

But you do cook (presumably) most of your own food, and you drive your own car. You capture most of the benefit of economies of scale and specialization, and then you do the last 5%.

This is what people are talking about. AWS is like eating out for every meal or taking an Uber everywhere. Sure it’s convenient, and has its time and place, but it’s probably not the best default option.

[10000truths]

> The HN community 1) likes building and hacking, and 2) has nostalgia for old technology. This makes them feel a lot of affinity toward "doing things themselves" -- server infrastructure, running desktop linux, avoiding dependencies in their code.

It's not nostalgia, it's a cynical wisdom of surviving the "move fast and break things" mentality with which so many businesses shoot themselves in the foot. The more you can do in house, the less impacted you are by externalities.

> The reality, though, is that the steady march of progress encourages us to outsource what we can to people who are better at the thing that is auxiliary to what we do.

Outsourcing isn't progress, it's a business strategy that involves shifting responsibilities to a third party. Done right, it's an effective way to build on previous work to achieve an otherwise intractable business goal. Done wrong, it devolves into a shitfest as your success lies at the mercy of some entity whose interests are not necessarily aligned with yours.

> I don't grow food because I'm bad at growing. I don't repair my car because I'm bad at auto repair.

Because those things require serious investments in time and money. But there's plenty of things you can quickly pick up that make no financial sense to outsource. You can buy your own groceries and cook your own meals. You can change your own tires when you get a flat, or change your own oil when the dashboard light comes on. Not everything that can be outsourced should be.

[seydor]

but cloud is not outsourcing what you know how to build. afaik it requires you learn new things and doing things in new ways, permanently. And now you re stuck learning these proprietary things that are intentionally incompatible with each other and care about lock-in and money and such

you don't grow food because it s cheaper to buy, it's all about economics (which takes care of division of labour; the word literally means the division of things in a house). Free money essentially means people who do random shit remain unpunished

[pclmulqdq]

This is true about HN, and a very healthy perspective on cloud. It is very much the minority opinion that using the cloud is like using a repair shop for a car. The vast majority of people think they are saving money by doing it for one reason or another, rather than effectively outsourcing dev competency.

Unfortunately, the competency you are outsourcing is rare and getting rarer, meaning that infrastructure products are getting very expensive (and profitable).

[lr4444lr]

You're understating the case: you don't grow food even if you're good at growing, because your value add as a niche software dev probably brings you much greater remuneration and benefit to your customers than if you were a farmer.