I don't think that method is obsolete. If your're a self-taught hobbyist then it makes sense to try to gain experience with hosting a product. I have been do

I don't think that method is obsolete. If your're a self-taught hobbyist then it makes sense to try to gain experience with hosting a product. I have been doing things that way since I was in college. However, I still love what the cloud offers and I think that's worth learning too. For your next hobby project you may see the server set up as mundane and time consuming. If so then you could use one of the PaaS/IaaS products that are out there. Rolling your own is always fun. I have worked in places that have their own data centers or that couldn't go to the cloud for various reasons. These skills are good to know. Also as a dev I still set up my own local servers for development - so you still have chances to learn.