
Heroku DX: The New Heroku Developer Experience - Spiritus
https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2014/9/23/introducing-heroku-dx
======
mark_l_watson
I like the new Ember.js based UI! Nice.

I have periodically used Heroku a lot, but I do have one gripe about them:

I tend to run a lot of low traffic web apps, apps that run well on Heroku's
free tier (and not minding the occasionally loading request delay). However, I
just don't feel comfortable using a service a lot that is free: being a
freeloader. (Compare to Google: they make money off of me because I click on
interesting looking ads.)

If Heroku had a cheap $10/month 1 dyno tier (that might have a perk, like
staying resident, not swapped out) that was restricted to a lower number of
requests per day, then they would get a lot of my business running my
experimental projects.

I have considered paying for a second dyno that I don't really need, but
$30/month each for a lot of experimental web apps does add up. Not too off
topic: I just wrote about how I create a personal Heroku-like experience on a
VPS: [http://blog.markwatson.com/2014/09/setting-up-heroku-like-
gi...](http://blog.markwatson.com/2014/09/setting-up-heroku-like-git-push-
deploys.html)

In any case, I think Heroku provides a great developer experience.

~~~
nthj
I've sent Heroku tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of dollars in business by
referring clients over the years. The fact that they've spent 78¢ in AWS fees
for my hobby apps causes me to lose approximately 0 seconds of sleep at night.

~~~
themartorana
What's with the entitlement? How about being thankful that they have a free
plan you can use, that's useful, and continues to be available?

A referral is - unless an arrangement has been made - a service to the person
you're referring, in that you're making a recommendation built on trust and
aren't misleading someone.

~~~
rattray
I don't think nthj was being ungrateful. Referral fees are a service to both
parties, and companies often pay referral fees as a thank-you. nthj was merely
pointing out that he takes his referral fee in the form of free hosting for
tiny projects, so he doesn't need to feel any guilt.

You are probably being downvoted for being unnecessarily caustic. Your point
wasn't a bad one, even if I think you're wrong; consider rephrasing with an
edit?

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vdaniuk
Though I used Heroku in the past and enjoyed the seamless(mostly) experience,
I am in the process of moving my infrastructure to docker containers.

I dislike the proprietary nature of Heroku platform and I am betting on Docker
+ Flynn/Deis as a future golden standard of PaaS. My confidence is based on
the momentum of Docker and Docker hosting services (orchardup, tutum,
stackdock) as evidenced by their funding/acquisitions and tech news hype. Also
digitalocean, linode and other VPS provders have easy to install docker
images.

I am enjoying (probably false) confidence that investing now in the docker
expertise, I will have my development and deployment strategies mostly set for
next 3-5 years. Rvm, virtualenv, haskell platform, etc - everyting becomes
easier with docker to develop AND to deploy. Heroku doesn't solve that. New
services and products would be adopted by decentralized docker ecosystem
faster than by Heroku.

This feels really nice.

Am I wrong to bet on docker? Should I return back to the the poisoned fruits
of Heroku walled garden or venture forth in the great ocean with Docker? Is
there a consensus in HN community?

~~~
skrebbel
> _My confidence is based on the momentum of Docker and Docker hosting
> services (orchardup, tutum, stackdock)_

Orchardup was acquihired because of an open source tool they hacked and they
are discontinuing their hosting service.

Tutum has no SLA at all and explicitly recommends only using their service for
toy products. Basically, they're not a real hosting provider right now, just a
very expensive toy.

Stackdock has been "currently upgrading our platform and sign-up has been
temporarily disabled" for months now. I'm wondering what's going on, but I
wouldn't be surprised if blocking new signups for such a long time means
they're about to pull the plug, for whatever weird reason. So long without new
customers (while I'm sure some are leaving) can't be healthy. I really want to
give them money but I can't.

Finally, the people who made Docker itself once ran a PaaS service, dotCloud.
It has been sold off and does not seem to be getting much new investment -
definitely not any support for directly hosting Docker containers.

In short, there are currently 0 real Docker container hosting providers (and
by 'real' I mean that they will exist past October and have at least _some_
uptime guarantees).

I really want you to be right, but currently the evidence looks very bleak
IMO.

We made this same bet last January and we're currently spending way too much
effort DIY'ing it all on a VPS.

~~~
vdaniuk
Yes, your arguments are convincing.

However, Orchardup was acquihired by Docker itself and I am sure they are
planning to provide container hosting.

Tutum has just raised about $2M and are in the process of going gold with
their service.

Yeah, stackdock is MIA.

However, the main point is that Docker is quite young and already has a
developed ecosystem. Also all of these are specialized docker container
providers, while I have no problems deploying a container on most VPS
providers, IaaS platforms or even bare metal.

The Docker ecosystem is just starting to develop, Docker PaaS platforms are
still in beta and while there is a lot of uncertainty, the vitals of the
ecosystem look good. I may be wrong, but I am taking the plunge and my efforts
will contribute a small part to the Docker ecosystem.

~~~
nickstinemates
We have no interest in providing container hosting. We acquired Orchard for
the great people doing amazing things in the ecosystem so they could continue
their work on Fig in the context of Docker.

------
matt2000
I _love_ the developer experience with Heroku, just please give some of the
gains of Moore's law back to your customers. While AWS and Google drop prices
and increase their offering, the 1x dyno stays exactly where it's always been.
I am completely fine with paying a premium over other services for your
awesome toolset, but please just give us some of the improvements other cloud
services are seeing instead of taking that as profits.

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hhandoko
I love the developer experience that Heroku provides, however I wish the would
lower their prices a little bit and/or introduce additional pricing tiers.

## The dynos are quite expensive by current standards

AWS has been continually dropping their prices, however those savings haven't
been carried over to Heroku? Either:

1) lower pricing, or

2) improve the resource allocation for the current dynos at the same price
point, e.g. 1x dyno - x1CPU + 1GB, and 2x dyno - x2CPU + 2GB.

## There is a big gap between 2x and Performance dynos

Java apps are recommended to run with 1GB RAM, so practically my only option
is to continue to scale horizontally [1]. Maybe there is an opportunity for a
x2 CPU and 2GB dyno at $100/mo?

Notes: [1] - I would have loved to have a bit more memory at my disposal. 1.5
/ 2GB would be ideal, but upgrading from 2x to Performance is too big of a
jump ($70/mo to $570/mo).

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paukiatwee
I like Heroku's PostgreSQL. So far only AWS RDS can compete. Or there is any
recommendation of PostgreSQL as a Service?

Heroku Standard 0 (1GB RAM): $50.00 per month RDS On Demand (1GB RAM): $12.96
per month RDS REserved 1 Year (1GB RAM): $9.29 per month

~~~
iagooar
In terms of what do you want the recommendation? Pricing? Performance?
Scalability? Availability? Tech support?

I would go with Heroku or AWS RDS. Both truly deliver and make devs / devops
sleep better.

~~~
paukiatwee
Price/Performance. Most my apps low traffic so scalability and availability
not that critical.

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lucisferre
So far I love the new DX, I've been using the beta for a while now. It's a
significantly improved UX overall.

On an unrelated note, I think it's time to retire the 1X tier, or just make
that the free tier and bring the price of 2X in line with 1X. You just can't
do all that much with 512MB of ram and given the progression of technology
this doesn't seem like a huge ask.

Also in the interest of security I can't think of any reason why encryption-
at-rest should be available on the standard database tier.

But then maybe I'm just cheap.

~~~
derwiki
My start up has been running just the free tier for almost two years. Simple
Rails app, running Unicorn and 4-5 workers.

------
smanuel
How does the new Dashboard + Metrics compare to using the New Relic plugin?

~~~
thinkbohemian
I would say depending on what you're looking at they're complimentary. NR can
give you some really in-depth timing information such as how much time is
spent in the DB versus garbage collection on a certain request. The metrics
here are very high level, response time, memory usage, CPU load, etc. New
Relic doesn't have the ability to be as precise with its system resource
measurements inside of the Dyno so they're both very useful.

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driverdan
No RAM for Postgres until you reach $50/m? Talk about profit margins!

~~~
STRiDEX
Yeah, its a bit of a jump between the $9 and $50 tiers.

------
lunarcave

      Application Metrics are currently only available for apps with two or more running dynos of any size
    

Of course, I can't be a freeloader and complain about this I guess.

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ShashankR
I always hated the all dark design of their dashboard. I'm glad they are using
some lighter colors now!!

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Cthulhu_
A bit of an unfortunate choice of name if you consider the name a smiley DX

~~~
gknoy
You could imagine it as either an angry face, or a large grin + bow tie, I
suppose.

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mangeletti
I love that Heroku has redesigned the UI, but jeeze. Ever hear the expression,
"too much of a good thing"? Their trademark purple is neat, in small doses.

For instance, I REALLY REALLY love the ocean. I love SCUBA diving, and I love
the color blue. However, you won't find me living in this house
[http://cl.ly/3I3R2z0q1A2S](http://cl.ly/3I3R2z0q1A2S). However,
[http://cl.ly/0R3H3k2s3Z3x](http://cl.ly/0R3H3k2s3Z3x) looks very appealing to
me. Catch my drift?

It's as if Heroku fired all of their designers and put developers in charge of
the entire UI design process. I've seen that happen, so I don't say that to be
a troll. I'm seriously disgusted by the monotonous nature of the new UI.

That said, it appears to have very many useful new features, which surely
outweighs most of my aesthetic concerns.

~~~
colinbartlett
Well, I like it. It's pretty and it's not just black text on white background.

