> Setting up environments becomes a massive PITA when working directly with VMs. The end result is either custom scripts, which is a messier version of terraform, which ends up being messier than just writing a couple of manifest files for a managed k8s.
The author advocates using a high-level PaaS. For sure working directly with VMs is the wrong answer to premature optimization, but as an early stage startup, there's plenty of services around that you basically just need to point your Git repo at and you'll have a reasonable infrastructure set up for you.
OP here, I agree. You can get super far with a service like fly.io/Heroku/Netlify/Vercel etc. (pick the one that works with your stack). VMs are an anti-pattern as well for the early stages of an application or startup.
I find those solutions end up being harder once you have to integrate something new you didn't know you needed. And the cost, at least for something like Heroku, is MORE than using something like GKE where I don't need a new dyno for every service. I consider GKE (and DO's and AWS's equivalent k8s solutions) on the same platform level as a fly.io/Heroku/etc.
The author advocates using a high-level PaaS. For sure working directly with VMs is the wrong answer to premature optimization, but as an early stage startup, there's plenty of services around that you basically just need to point your Git repo at and you'll have a reasonable infrastructure set up for you.