Heroku Lifts Ruby on Rails Development into the Cloud (YC Winter 08)

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/07/heroku-lifts-ruby-on-rails-development-to-the-cloud/

by danielha • 18 years ago

59 35 18 years ago

techcrunch.com

immad• 18 years ago

kicks ass. Congrats guys!

hollywoodcole3• 18 years ago

Awesome! Already in line for the beta testing.

wallflower3• 18 years ago

Already got a response. I'm in! Though I don't know what to do as I don't know any Ruby. Time to learn... "Hello, Heroku!" here I come!

hollywoodcole3• 18 years ago

Just got my invite and holy this is so much better than Ubuntu + vi + screen. How do you Mac+Textmate guys like it?

wallflower3• 18 years ago

I'm excited to beta test. Who needs a MacBook Air to create your own interesting RoR project? This will let me hack Ruby on an ancient laptop. For bonus points, eventually, perhaps they could offer for-fee code reviews...

jey4• 18 years ago

I think an IDE implemented in JavaScript would be rather inefficient, but that doesn't matter with modern hardware.

boucher• 18 years ago

I know that Heroku's IDE is plenty efficient, even on older hardware. People have a hugely mistaken impression of what can and cannot be done in JavaScript.

Readmore• 18 years ago

Very nice. I had this same exact idea a couple months back with the focus of tying it into a thin client computer. You buy the hardware and you instantly have access to all of these browser based applications that are hosted and built through a web service.

I'm on the sign-up list, can't wait to give it a try.

nextmoveone• 18 years ago

This is freaking awesome!

Signed up for beta!

webwright• 18 years ago

Big congrats!

jraines• 18 years ago

Did you guys get a confirmation email when you signed up? When I hit "sign-up" all that happened was an instant AJAX-y refresh of the page.

wallflower3• 18 years ago

No confirmation. But less than a half-hour later got the invitation email...

dottertrotter• 18 years ago

Anyone got an invite they can send me?

endlessvoid94• 18 years ago

It must be nice to have the problem of needing to prevent an onslaught of new users.

That's when you know your idea is pretty good.

jey4• 18 years ago

"Relative to other programming languages, Ruby and the Rails framework can be particularly onerous just to install and configure."

WTF are they talking about?

  sudo port install rb-rubygems
  sudo gem install rails
  rails myproject
  cd myproject
  script/server

bayareaguy4• 18 years ago

You know, stuff like:

  powerbook.local 102> sudo port install rubygems
  Password:
  Error: Port rubygems not found

jey4• 18 years ago

Fixed. The port was actually "rb-rubygems", not "rubygems".

I'm no rails fanboy by far, but it's unfair to claim that rails is a hard environment to use when in reality rails goes out of its way to make RoR development dead simple.

</nitpick>

mechanical_fish2• 18 years ago

Congratulations, you have built an app with one user!

Now, if you want more users, and your home machine has a static IP, and port 80 is open, no problem. Except for the part where you will live in terror of any security holes. Oh, and the part where you've only got one server -- if this is your production server, where do you do your development? And then there's the part where you have to set up an init task to launch your server when the computer reboots. And the backups, of course.

Now show me how to give three remote collaborators secure access to your app's source code, but no access to anything else.

The default Rails install workflow is really nice, don't get me wrong. And Capistrano is great, and Slicehost is pretty easy to work with. But for a quick-and-dirty Rails demo, particularly in a teaching environment, Heroku appears to kick serious ass.

jey4• 18 years ago

Yes, servers should be maintained by people who know what they're doing. This means you need to hire a third party (e.g. Engine Yard) or learn how to admin a server.

I'm not knocking Heroku -- you're right, it definitely looks like it'd be great for people just getting into web development or programming in general. I bet that most people who get into programming these days start off thinking "I want to make a website", and tools like this cater to that crowd.

geebee• 18 years ago

You've given some good reasons for why it's complicated to install and configure a web framework. But the claim here is that ruby and rails are difficult relative to other programming languages.

Having installed and configured other frameworks for dev work, I'd say that rails is exceptionally easy, but I can't really speak to the challenges at the production level. For that, I use Joyent, which has been fairly easy as well.

None of this is meant to knock Heroku.

joshwa• 18 years ago

download locomotive or download instantrails

tlrobinson2• 18 years ago

That's great for development, but not for production. Deploying with Apache, etc is still a pain in the ass, as far as I can tell.

hollywoodcole3• 18 years ago

Anyone have and idea what this will cost when out of beta?

rapind• 18 years ago

Very very very cool

mechanical_fish2• 18 years ago

Just tried Heroku... very fun.

There are limits to my joy, though. I immediately miss:

- emacs. Or at least Textmate. When I press ctrl-a and I get "select all" instead of move-beginning-of-line, I sigh inwardly.

- git. Although the "snapshot" feature is awesome and is arguably all that many people would want in a tool like this.

- autotest. This is a big one. I'm not much of a Rails wizard, but already I'm hooked on the joys of autotest.

Rather than ask for any of these potentially obscure features, however, let me ask this: how about a secure API that lets me (a) run rake tasks remotely and receive their output in return; and (b) upload/download any of my source files? Then I believe you can leave autotest, emacs, and perhaps even git support as exercises for the student. :)

kirubakaran• 18 years ago

Wow! I wish someone did the same for Pylons.

simianstyle• 18 years ago

I would more likely import an existing rails project onto heroku rather than code the entire thing through the web. I have my own preferences when it comes to things like IDE's.

Still, nice scalability features.

gibsonf1• 18 years ago

Wow - you can now code on your Iphone - fingers permitting! A most impressive concept - congratulations!

Heroku Lifts Ruby on Rails Development into the Cloud (YC Winter 08)

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