Comment by TZubiri
6 hours ago
I think the sense of the word professional here is not as a boolean professional/amateur, but the sense of professionalism, the characteristic of taking business seriously, not letting personal matters intervene, and in this case, investing into tools.
To put an example, suppose you hire a painter, and they show up with non-work attire, no ladder, no brush, they ask you to buy a can of paint for them and a brush. Compared to a contractor that bills you flat and brins their own ladder, has work clothing and shoes, an air pneumatic spray painter, a breathing mask. Who is more professional?
It's part of a broader debate for sure, OP seems to have done it more for the experience than to actually save 1.50$.
Nope. There's no broader debate. "Professional" means "X is getting paid for this", not "X is paying something in order for X to be able to do this". It's that simple.
> To put an example, suppose you hire a painter, and they show up with non-work attire, no ladder, no brush, they ask you to buy a can of paint for them and a brush. Compared to a contractor that bills you flat and brins their own ladder, has work clothing and shoes, an air pneumatic spray painter, a breathing mask. Who is more professional?
Literally meaningless. Are both getting paid? Yes? Then they are both professionals.
You can insist on using "professional" in a strained way to try to facilitate some deep desire to be judgmental and gatekeepy, but "professional" means what it means. If you mean something else, then say what you mean and leave out the euphemisms.
It always depends on results. It can be unprofessional to design a system that takes an external variable like S3 for granted, especially if it's not needed. As long as the hack isn't worse than the official $1.50 happy-path, you might as well save the end-customer a monthly fee and reduce your attack surface.
I think hacks like these have a positive effect on the industry. It pushes back on meaningless, encroaching monetization and encourages Conatbo to reevaluate their service offerings to ensure they justify the price.