There are a couple of reasons but I can cite a few, I tried to push for PaaS and failed the hard way:
1. No widespread practice of environment provisioning automation. Today Docker and k8s are ubiquitous. Having a list of requirements your application needs well kept were hard to find - which Heroku needs.
2. In the same sense as above, automated deployment was not a common thing.
3. Barriers to cloud adoption. Development tools were not widespread. Paying for software development and deployment is common now, it wasn't.
I agree. If we can start a culture of relying on SQLite instead of PostgreSQL/MySQL, a whole server-side application can be a simple standalone binary.
Also, having a binary makes it easy to bundle in an Electron app.
They do something which is "common" in Apple-land (Dash for MacOS does this, a Twitter client did this as well, over and over): They get the same app, add some features, call it v2, launch as a new app and remove v1 from the store.
They don't "give" you the new version. They take away the app you paid "once", and provide you with a version with an expire date. So you have no choice. You either pay them, again, or lose access to the v2 (subscription based) app.
I don't mind paying for good software, I even think Hallide is worth $60. But I won't make the same mistake again. So best of luck Lux! I really wish you all the success. If you treat your customers right this time.
I might be missing something here but thet "Calendar API" exists for a long time: CalDav.
You can have .ical for a whole Calendar, not only an (offline) event. The calendar can be synced with new events, through CalDav, when they are added to the calendar you shared. You would still have to accept the prompt once but that is it.
I am not against your rant, your are 100% on point there, but maybe your code without framework has issues you don't know?
I would rant against this forced and meaningless deprecations on Symfony-land but the main issue with PHP, IMHO, is people using it don't grok the language strengths - much in the same direction of your rant. For 5-10 years PHP developers have been trying to "bring" great features from other ecosystems making PHP not to be good on anything anymore.
I feel sad. I liked the "hack 'n slash" programming style it allowed. Now everything (everywhere) needs a package manager, a build system, etc.
1. No widespread practice of environment provisioning automation. Today Docker and k8s are ubiquitous. Having a list of requirements your application needs well kept were hard to find - which Heroku needs. 2. In the same sense as above, automated deployment was not a common thing. 3. Barriers to cloud adoption. Development tools were not widespread. Paying for software development and deployment is common now, it wasn't.