Docker is good software. I want to say that up front because the internet has a special talent for turning every tooling opinion into a cage match. I use Docker. I like Docker for databases, repeatable CI jobs, weird dependency stacks, internal services, and anything where I need a clean system image that behaves the same everywhere. But I do not want Docker to be the default deploy path for every web app. Sometimes I just want to put a small app on a VPS and have it run. That should feel boring. The default path got heavier A lot of modern deploy tutorials quietly turn this: build app copy files to server start app route traffic Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode into this: write a Dockerfile pick a base image handle build layers create a registry push an image pull it on the server wire up compose configure networking mount secrets debug why the container exits Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode None of those steps are evil. They are just a lot.…