In ~50 lines of code I can erect a load balanced set of web servers with my app binary preloaded, secured in a private VPN subnet with an auto-scaling policy attached to it.
15 years ago this project would have meant:
- Racking new hardware somewhere on premise
- Configuring several routers and networking equipment
- Tweaking the different software responsible for the different app layers (load balancing, web servers, etc)
- Hoping we forecasted demand correctly and whatever hardware we racked can handle a traffic spike or growth surge
You needed a lot more expertise back then.
And really you can trade all of what I'm doing for a higher level of abstraction that requires even less knowledge of the underlying technology (netlify, heroku, amplify, etc) if you're willing to pay a little more.