

Heroku Lifts Ruby on Rails Development into the Cloud (YC Winter 08) - danielha
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/07/heroku-lifts-ruby-on-rails-development-to-the-cloud/

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mechanical_fish
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. :)

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jey
" _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

~~~
mechanical_fish
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.

~~~
jey
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.

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wallflower
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...

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

~~~
boucher
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.

~~~
tlrobinson
Yeah! Even 3D!

<http://tlrobinson.net/misc/3d.html>

~~~
brianmckenzie
I like this. That is all.

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endlessvoid94
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.

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gibsonf1
Wow - you can now code on your Iphone - fingers permitting! A most impressive
concept - congratulations!

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simianstyle
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.

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kirubakaran
Wow! I wish someone did the same for Pylons.

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Readmore
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.

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jraines
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.

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

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

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nextmoveone
This is freaking awesome!

Signed up for beta!

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hollywoodcole
Awesome! Already in line for the beta testing.

~~~
wallflower
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!

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dottertrotter
Anyone got an invite they can send me?

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webwright
Big congrats!

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rapind
Very very very cool

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immad
kicks ass. Congrats guys!

