some people (myself included) like hosting their own stack for fun or for learning.
There's additional concern with tying your work to something like github it makes it more of a pain to pull it off and put it somewhere else.
I'm not really sure what you mean by objectively inferior. It's trade offs like everything in this field.
As far as harder, I don't really think the lift for a personal VPS is that high. Again it's a fun hobby project for most. It's fun to run your own stack.
If you want to opt into the github cloudflare goodness that's fine they're good services but I wouldn't say it's better or degnegrate others for not doing that.
> for learning.
That's great if that's what you want, but you are commenting in a thread full of people gleefully spouting off about decades-old installations that they self-admittedly have “no idea” how to upgrade. Most people in here would be better off if they admitted to themselves that they are not actually taking advantage of the opportunity to learn, and are instead undertaking a liability.
In this framing, learning is always a liability. The real issue is undertaking the liability while not capitalizing on the opportunity it presents.
The “liability” I refer to is that of wilfully, knowingly leaving a system unpatched in order to avoid the learning opportunity of upgrading it.
We're working toward the same goal here, yes.