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by x0x0 615 days ago
Or they're optimizing for not being a sysadmin, which some people can't do and even some of the people who can find to be very ungratifying work. For a project that runs on this person's enthusiasm, that seems not crazy.

It's certainly possible to spin up your own db backup scripts, monitor that, make sure it gets offsite to an s3 bucket or something, set yourself a calendar reminder to test that all once a month, etc... but if I had to write out a list of things that I enjoy doing and a list of things that I don't, that work would feature heavily on the "yeah, but no" list.
2 comments
Vegenoid 615 days ago
Yes, if you don't want to do that work and are happy to pay someone else to take care of it, then that is great. But if you like making free web apps, relying on a PaaS will get expensive.
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immibis 615 days ago
If you become a sysadmin, not only do you save $100 per month but you can also add it to your CV.

DHH (Rails founder) thinks you should dare to connect a server to the internet: https://world.hey.com/dhh/dare-to-connect-a-server-to-the-in...

(I already submitted this once, but given the discussion here, I think it's worth posting again, if my rate limit allows it)

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ryandrake 615 days ago
> The merchants of complexity thrive when they can scare you into believing that even the simplest things are too dangerous to even attempt by yourself these days.

Awesome first sentence! I know I'm going to agree with the article just by that. This applies to so many things in life, too. We're been taught that so many things people routinely did in the past are now scary and impossible.

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x0x0 615 days ago
> you can also add it to your CV

That can backfire and give an employer the idea you want to do that work though. I not only hate it, but nobody gives a damn until stuff breaks and then everyone is mad. You rarely get rewarded for stuff silently sitting there and working.

edit: to be clear, I think doing it yourself once is great experience. And I've run small web apps on a single server, all the way from supervisord -> nginx -> passenger -> rails with pg and redis. I'd rather build features or work on marketing.

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