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I think that most developers have a "personal server" (or two!)

I keep MongoDB, CouchDB, Sesame, PostgreSQL+PostGIS, etc. "always on" for my personal and research projects - keeping my stuff separate and using customer's VPSs or EC2 instances, etc. for their work.

Would I want to have all of this stuff running all the time on my laptop? I don't think so.

I used to keep at least one server running on our home network but now I mostly use a really cheap VPS, and a small "3 year pay in advance" EC2 instance. Running a server or two in my house is something that I only do for special needs.

Anyway, I live with the network latency hit for the convenience of (usually) not having to run servers in my home.

1 comments

i don't, other than my linode virtual servers (i definitely have a non-work personal one for experiementing with).

i consider myself a developer along the lines of programmer and maker, even software engineer at times. i love extensible code. i love making things that work, are useful and have code that i can be proud.

code is TOTALLY different than configuration files and installing things. i only do system administration because i have to, and even then i consider it the worst "waste" of time (it's not actually a waste because yeah, it's nice to have a webserver and cron jobs, etc).

i'd much rather be writing documentation or even better, designing and diagramming how some neat pieces of code are going to work together.

i feel like people who figured out how to make allen wrenches keeping thinking it'd be cool if everyone else made allen wrenches. i just want to make bikes, including choppers and tall bikes and elegant fixies. other people just want to ride bikes, and that suits me fine because maybe i can sell my bikes to them, just as i don't mind buying allen wrenches.

maybe we each of us have a maker inside, but luckily we don't all want to make the same things. don't fight the business model.