“Cloud is a stupid way to go”
What exactly is the cloud? I thought it was a nonspecific term for any data repository out there on the internet.
Cloud services are an entire ecosystem. They offer dozens of services such as Kubernetes containers, databases, file systems, machine learning, identify and access management, etc. A developer has the choice of using those services or not. Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers similar but distinctly different and incompatible services from Microsoft’s Azure. A developer can also stay agnostic and develop their own services as well.
P.S. Cloud operates on subscriptions, which is another word for a virtual environment that is all yours that you don’t share with others. It’s like having your own computing environment all to yourself.