[jmaker]

More often than not, I’d rather avoid the self-focused staff who rarely give it to you with hygiene in mind and at this time of the year in the northern hemisphere are likely to be sick, the mediocre coffee (price surge in coffee beans), and the dirty tables at a café, and the uncomfortable seating. And it’s rather 5€ for the croissant alone, in many places these days. Lidl’s croissants aren’t very good but they’re only marginally less good than what you can hope for at a café. McDonald’s croissants in Italy are quite ok by the way.

[remus]

Me too, but it's worth remembering that's not the case for everyone. Some people want to have a little chat with the person at the counter, sit down for 5 mins in the corner of the cafe and eat their croissant. 5 euro can be a good price if that's what you want, and it doesn't matter if the lidl croissant is free, it will still be disappointing to the person who wants the extras.

[jmaker]

Absolutely. I believe what I wanted to convey is that there are trade-offs in every decision that you can make. Maybe that’s even the point of a decision in the first place.

This in turn means that you always have several options, and more importantly you can invent a new way to enjoy the experience you hope to get from that interaction at a café in your mind, maybe a scene from your past or from a movie, which you’re no longer as likely to experience on average.

That said, I’ve got a favorite café where I used to spend time frequently. But their service deteriorated. And the magic is gone. So I moved on with my expectations.

Back to the analogy with the hyperscalers. I had bad experience with Azure and GCP, I’ve experienced the trade-offs of DigitalOcean and Linode and Hetzner, and of running on-premises clusters. It turned out, I’m the most comfortable with the trade-offs that AWS imposes.