having memcached or a sql server spin up as an appliance is kinda neato

and yeah AWS is expensive

i've never paid for it; only use it through work

but the cost of AWS is basically a means for entities to abstract away their IT staff so it's "worth it"

don't need to pay homo sapiens to run stuff

is it really different than say, run a bunch of VPSes from different pre-made images?

functionally - no; but, they provide API endpoints to abstracted services, so, instead of running some config mgmt or cloudinit script to provision a VPS instance for something like hadoop, you just use Amazon's shit by saying "I want a hadoop instance that does N-cycles amt of work" or whatever.

it's "magic"

idk you should research it yourself. it's worth learning if not only for the resume padding if you're a career-minded type.

as far as that $50, how about software defined radio gear

idk wtf ur interested in

I'm just a hobbyist programmer that does small sysadmin stuff

cool

Managed to get myself contracted to my school

So they cover anything I include in the bill without questions

Optimized a bunch of stuff and cut my yearly expenses by 50$

imho hobby stuff is not worth buying since it's mostly distraction. if your goal is programming, just code.

Need to do something with it

Well.. if coding isn't your hobby, programming will be hell

no no no

i mean

You need to like it if you want to endure it

you can do plenty of programming without gadgets

and have lots of fun

oh in that sense

yeah

I guess

yeah, the devices tend to lock you into a particular paradigm or some specific language / libraries / dialects and you end up fighting hardware and getting distracted

rpi is different since they're mostly transparent and you can treat them like another machine

but arduinos and fpgas and stuff, not really transferrable and in the end not worth it

general processing almost always wins in the long term

unless you're writing password crackers or something

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

sorry i'm a bit of a killjoy

but I have a neckbeardy giant box(es) of hardware I've accumulated over the years so it's kinda speaking from exp

no no, this seems practical what you're telling me

I'm paranoid about finding work anyways

So anything that helps is good

yeah it's all fun and games until like... you're fighting some stupid hardware bug or wasting time with some bogus line connection

devops is "hot" or whatever. learn saltstack or coreos or something.

easy job in most metro markets