$7 is less than a single beer in the pub. If you can afford to devote thousands of hours to learn programming and then hundreds to thousands of hours to build an app then you can afford the hosting cost...
True, I noticed that too. I mean, how low do you value your time to not pay $7/mo for your a project you are spending significant time on?
On the other hand... there is a ton of intangible value in the form of knowledge to be gained from switching tech stacks and hosting platforms. So another way to look at it is, this is a chance to re-evaluate and potentially upgrade your tech stack or skils.
Which is not what I got from TFA, more like their local bar no longer giving away free buffalo wings because people weren’t buying drinks so now they’re shopping for new happy hour specials.
About a month ago I found a tiny VPS for ~$11 for two years which could easily host a pet node app if I were into that sort of thing. $5.50 a year I think it is.
Actually, there's a whole set of mental heuristics that are evolving in my head surrounding monthly-recurring-discretionary-fixed-costs, as compared with the cost of a $BEVERAGE at the $VENUE. It runs the gamut from a $5/mo DO droplet, which costs a Bier vom Fass in your average pub in Germany and grants me a public-facing static IP, to a $20/mo donation to Wikipedia, which costs a Singapore Sling at the Raffles Hotel and grants me a clear conscience when I dismiss its increasingly concerning[0] petitions to donate.
All that said, in addition to the booze quotient, one also has to compare the more nebulous cost of _providing payment credentials at all_ to a new party which didn't have them before; i.e., enlarging your digital footprint[1]. This often must include a mailing address and/or a phone number. In the event of a breach, the consequences to the payor range from a mere uptick in spam/robocalls/junk mail to identity theft and all that entails. We can agree the dollar here is a huge wildcard, just like the odds of it happening at all. It varies by individual, is usually unquantified, my point is the cost/benefit gets real muddy, real fast.
Much more fruitful discussions had a couple of months ago when this decision was first announced 1. People making the decision to move are basing that on slightly more than just not wanting to pay the cost of a beer each month. Furthermore, free tiers are loss leaders, and removing them predictably has consequences.
