I've had SSH, SMTP, POP3, HTTP, HTTPS and many other services open to the world since the 90's. I have fail2ban running. It is not that scary.
But, on home computer, I do not want to be bothered with all the security efforts, and want to keep it simple. But I have plans to put up an isolated server setup someday. But too broke right now, and looking for a job. heh.
I have seen people, who is using simple password based authentication, with really simple password. I always go and fix that first, so, it's too common, which is why It's scary.
Works so well that it's easy to forget they're running.