Comment by dig1

1 day ago

> The general setup for the largest players in that space was haproxy in front of nginx in front of several PHP servers in front of a MySQL database that had one primary r/w with one read only replica.

You'd be surprised that the most stable setups today are run this way. The problem is that this way it's hard to attract investors; they'll assume you are running on old or outdated tech. Everything should be serverless, agentic and, at least on paper, hyperscalable, because that sells further.

> Today at AWS, it is easily possible for people to spend a multiple of the cost of that hardware setup every month for far less compute power and storage.

That is actually the goal of hyperscalers: they are charging you premium for way inferior results. Also, the article stated a very cold truth: "every engineer wants a fashionable CV that will help her get the next job" and you won't definitely get a job if you said: "I moved everything from AWS and put it behind haproxy on one bare-metal box for $100/mo infra bill".

> The problem is that this way it's hard to attract investors; they'll assume you are running on old or outdated tech. Everything should be serverless, agentic and, at least on paper, hyperscalable, because that sells further.

Investors don't give a shit about your stack

  • Many do. For most it's not the biggest concern (that would be quite weird). AFAIK it's mostly about reducing risk (avoiding complete garbage/duck taped setups)

    Source: I know a person who does tech DD for investors, and I've also been asked this question in DD processes.