You learn "good" habits from using cloud systems. You shouldn't be spending your time manually configuring your machines, you should be using DevOps to use source code to configure your machines. And building your own hardware is a great way to save money but you're still making capital expenditures when you could shift those expenses to operational expenditures, which is really the biggest benefit of cloud computing.
The systems all scale differently, depending on how their abstraction works. With Heroku yes, it's very easy to throttle up to more "dynos". They deal with the details for you. With Engine Yard, you have more control and so it's a little more involved because you instantiate new app server instances but it's still just as easy.
And using cloud systems also actually improves your architecture too. Instead of using local storage, you'll have to use a CDN like S3/CloudFront, which really is what you should be doing in the first place.
I signed up so that I could post that I strongly agree. I'm the CTO at a startup that depends way too heavily on me, and I use Tai Chi to stay sane. Tai Chi is about a lot of things but the part that keeps me sane is the meditative aspect of running my body through a "program" of movements, which requires a specific amount of attention. If your mind wanders during a Tai Chi form then you'll screw it up. And if you focus too MUCH then you'll also screw it up. So Tai Chi becomes a tool for practicing the mental state known as "flow".
Aside from it being a form of moving meditation for the mind, it helps the body, especially for a tech nerd. I began studying Tai Chi, I came near burnout partly because my body was always in a similar posture all week. I developed RSI in my neck and my shoulder from constantly tensing muscles to use a mouse or trackpad. If I worked through a weekend, or two in a row, then I might spend 20 or 30 days in a row with my shoulder tight. Tai Chi is not intense exercise, but it moves all of your muscles through their full range of motion. Simply having that "program" that I can run with my body eliminated my RSI. Even though I still have to spend way too much time at the keyboard.
The systems all scale differently, depending on how their abstraction works. With Heroku yes, it's very easy to throttle up to more "dynos". They deal with the details for you. With Engine Yard, you have more control and so it's a little more involved because you instantiate new app server instances but it's still just as easy.
And using cloud systems also actually improves your architecture too. Instead of using local storage, you'll have to use a CDN like S3/CloudFront, which really is what you should be doing in the first place.