All I'm saying is Direct-to-Video movies were always the best.

B. Imho docker is a trap. It makes you think it simplifies things because the initial install is quick. But everything that comes next is unnecessarily complex.

It depends on your context and project complexity...

If you can I would consider solution serverless compute and if that does not work for you then probably managed host that hosts container/microservice.

I prefer using containers and docker-compose to configure it all. Dockerfiles and docker-compose.yml force me to document what I had to do to get something working.

Going down the container route offers the ability to subsequently move the service around into different infrastructure .. especially attractive if you’re running virtualisation fabric like Proxmox

Containers for sure. I have limited server compute (read: one old laptop in a closet) at home and no time to think about how this or that might be affecting other stuff I run on the machine.

Containers 💯

Systemd init scripts and timers ftw. Because I know docker incurs overhead on networking and disk, so I like running lean and clean.