
Ask HN: Where did the name Heroku come from? - boggles
It sounds vaguely Japanese. I'm wondering if it's based on some Japanese word or how they came up with it. Anyone know?
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Readmore
All of their service levels, and server names, are japanese in nature so it's
probably a safe bet.

<http://heroku.com/pricing#blossom-1>

Also the service is amazing! I had been using Slicehost for the last 2-3 years
but I recently tried Heroku out and I love it, all of my latest projects are
being hosted there.

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boggles
Are you using the free version or a paid option? Because I find the non-free
options to be vastly more expensive than hosting options elsewhere. They
provide a valuable service in terms of taking administration issues out of the
picture and letting you just focus on developing your app. But my feeling is
this is not targeted at hackers who are surviving on rice and beans but rather
those who are more likely to have well-paying day jobs. Not that there's
anything wrong with that - it's a good business model - but since I'm in the
rice and beans category at the moment, I'm not in their league I'm afraid.

~~~
Readmore
I'll admit that it will definitely end up being more expensive over a more
'Hacker Focused' option like Slicehost. I think the reason that I like Heroku
is that it makes my deployment/configuration easier in the same way that Rails
makes app development easier. I know that there are guys over there who are
implementing the Varnish cache correctly, setting up load balancing,
implementing full text indexing, etc. It allows me to focus on my application
and not on the thousands of configuration options that I have to think about
if I'm the admin.

Now, with that said, once you start to grow your application the costs would
probably start to add up rapidly and it may be in your best interest to roll
your own, but in the beginning at least I think it's a great option for
getting off the ground quickly and correctly.

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ichverstehe
They wrote a program that would output Japanese-sounding words with a free
.com domain. Seriously.

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orionheroku
The term is merger of "Hero" and "Haiku". The Japanese theme is a nod to Matz
for creating Ruby.

