That’s crazy. I’m using spaces on several projects and never had so much as a blip from them. If you don’t mind what was the showstopper issue for you?
Erroneous 503s. I would get a 503 on every call. Uploading a single file with a single call would immediately 503. I never once got a successful upload. I simply switched the endpoint URL and credentials over to AWS S3 and it worked first time so it was not my code (though I suppose it could have been an issue in the library AWS's node S3 client). My theory was the request was somehow malformed based on what DO was expecting and it was returning a 503 rather than a 400. But the request did work with S3.
My main techniques for learning have been internet resources, https://www.inaturalist.org, https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/ , and sci-hub being indispensable. I also have built up a decent library of related books, though there are very few relating to galls mostly they are botany related.
This hobby has led me to become a much better photographer (this is one of my recent favorites https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/96982552) and gets me outside wandering around in nature at every opportunity that I have. My own yard, the neighborhood park, county/state/national parks, all of them offer nearly limitless exploration opportunity.
I have been at it for about 18 months and I feel like I am competent but am acutely aware of just how much more there is to learn, which is for me one of the main appeals.