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Learning to use EC2 for development is a great way to learn to use it for production.

I disagree. Running EC2 isn't rocket science. With web console, they have made it more simple.

What is little hard is, auto load balancing, shutting down instances based on req/minute, monitoring and stuff. But you don't play with that, if you are using remote EC2 machine as desktop.

I don't mind the effort, but I'm too cheap for the kind of fees he is talking about. Given the price of a white box of almost any capability, better can be had at your corner computer shop...

give it a few years and that will change dramatically

Development and production can run on the same network then, which depending upon what you're doing can make development way faster.

You might want that if you want to have your setup with you no matter where on Earth you happen to be.

I was thinking of using a dedicated server for this for a while, with visualization maybe: a VM for server, a VM for my desktop... Using EC2 for this instead gives you an option to relatively easily choose from several locations in different parts of the world. Also it forces you to learn using EC2.