Yeah I know of Terraform (for me it was via AWS) but I just wonder how it's that valuable. For personal use, I never drank the koolaid on IaaS to begin with. Always found PaaS to be a nicer experience and I like that it actually simplifies DevOps, doesn't add complexity like an AWS or GCP does. I figure if I want more control over the server I can just use a Linux on-prem (no cost) or virtual server and I can fully control the machine - where IaaS like AWS/GCP just feel like expensive jargon hell with too many products. For a larger org sure, you need regional deployments, IAM, and some other stuff - but mostly stuff that is peripheral to code and its hardware requirements.

My favorite DevOps setup is my Raspberry Pi home server running Raspbian, love this thing - WiFi, touch screen so I can hold it like a mobile device or just set it down somewhere while it's serving several APIs, websites, etc. all the time including a local business in SF. Haven't stopped or restarted it in months.

I look at some of these big, old behemoths, and just don't get it. Take Oracle - when you really get into what they "do" it's like... oh... so, a database? Right now they offer clone services of the other cloud providers too, and some other things, but it's mostly just those huge consulting contracts. I just wonder how they get them (and at those rates) if not for relationships, it doesn't seem like their technology is particularly good.

Personally I run stuff like React sites on Vercel, backends on a mix of my Raspberry Pi and Heroku, and 1 thing still in GCP that I can't wait to port out of there. Still looking for a home for my LLMs. As an individual developer, I will probably embrace PaaS and convenience more and more with regards to DevOps, but yeah interesting to see where open-source Terraform goes - would be cool to see companies doing more customized infra internally instead of everyone using AWS.