Python and Django on Heroku • Hacker News Board

Re: Python and Django on Heroku

#21

Post by pxlpshr » Wed, Sep 28, 2011, 9:00 PM UTC

Awesome news topped with even more awesomeness that Heroku is continuing to truck along post-acquisition.

We're now looking into +/-'s of moving from RAX Cloud Servers to Heroku.

Re: Python and Django on Heroku

#22

Post by aashay » Wed, Sep 28, 2011, 9:04 PM UTC

bmelton wrote: post #20

I loved Heroku, many moons ago when I was working in Rails. As I've emigrated away from Rails to Django, I've found dotcloud to be the premiere platform -- I want to qualify this, it is the premiere polyglot platform, but for each individual environment I've deployed on dotcloud, their experience has been the best. I haven't used dotcloud's Ruby/Rails stack, so I can't compare that, but Heroku is definitely fighting…

I still find Dotcloud's pricing violently expensive (and I have a free VIP plan). YMMV I guess.

Re: Python and Django on Heroku

#23

Post by zachwill » Wed, Sep 28, 2011, 9:07 PM UTC

I've been using Flask on Heroku since the Facebook apps announcement, and set up a boilerplate template here: https://github.com/zachwill/flask_heroku

Re: Python and Django on Heroku

#24

Post by craigkerstiens » Wed, Sep 28, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

ma2rten wrote: post #19

This is great! Looking at the Django tutorial in the docs [1], I think it's too bad, though, that they don't provide a build-in, well tuned WSGI Server. This way, you have to choose your own WSGI server, configure and update it yourself. [1] http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/django#using_a_differen...

We do not automatically use a wsgi server because we want to offer flexibility to our users. Additionally we felt that having less magic in what we automatically do to your application (other than run it) was more of the Python way.

Re: Python and Django on Heroku

#25

Post by aashay » Wed, Sep 28, 2011, 9:11 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #18

jedc wrote: post #5

Interesting... I wonder if this makes Google App Engine more appropriate for internal apps for Google Apps customers? For quick/easy personal hacking/development having a Python stack on Heroku seems pretty attractive now.

Personally I don't like Google App Engine, but I can understand its value -- it has reasonable free quotas (even now, after the pricing scheme changed), and your app ends up running on Google's infrastructure which is rock solid. However, I never understood why people like Heroku ... it's like renting instances on EC2, only 10 times more expensive. Of course, people then start enumerating a whole bunch of stuff that…

"it's like renting instances on EC2"

False. I'd suggest you take a look at their architecture overview. It's not like renting instances on EC2 at all because dynos != virtual machines. http://www.heroku.com/how

"Of course, people then start enumerating a whole bunch of stuff that they don't have to worry about when using Heroku. However, when starting out, configuring a server is just like configuring your localhost development environment. You just have to start with something that works, then gradually keep learning."

This may be fine for some, but for those that _don't_ want to worry about sysadmin work and want to focus on rapid iteration, Heroku makes more sense. Besides, it's not the initial configuration that is the most painful, it's the maintenance and cost associated with managing your own virtual instances, and infrastructure pieces such as reverse proxies, caches, etc.

"since GitHub's servers don't go sleeping when unused."

I'm not even sure what this means. Can you elaborate?

Re: Python and Django on Heroku

#26

Post by phzbOx » Wed, Sep 28, 2011, 9:27 PM UTC

aashay wrote: post #22

bmelton wrote: post #20

I loved Heroku, many moons ago when I was working in Rails. As I've emigrated away from Rails to Django, I've found dotcloud to be the premiere platform -- I want to qualify this, it is the premiere polyglot platform, but for each individual environment I've deployed on dotcloud, their experience has been the best. I haven't used dotcloud's Ruby/Rails stack, so I can't compare that, but Heroku is definitely fighting…

I still find Dotcloud's pricing violently expensive (and I have a free VIP plan). YMMV I guess.

Still:

   Q. Are there discounts for education and non profit users? 

   A. Yes. DotCloud provides special free and low cost plans for open source 
   developers, educational users and other qualifying non-profits. To inquire   
   about adding free or low cost capacity to your DotCloud account, please
   contact support.

Re: Python and Django on Heroku

#27

Post by Hayes » Wed, Sep 28, 2011, 9:28 PM UTC

Pewpewarrows wrote: post #2

As much as I've come to enjoy and appreciate the various start-ups whose mantra was "We're Heroku with Python/Django capabilities", it will be interesting to see which of those survive the next 8-12 months now that Heroku officially supports that stack. It'd be a shame to see ep.io and Gondor go the way of the dodo bird, but what sets them apart now?

Heroku is owned by Salesforce now and subject to their agenda. Could be a good thing for some reasons, but it leaves room for a nimble startup to use the start-up advantage (fast moving, close to customers, unencumbered by a corporate leash) to compete. They're going to have to keep moving though.

Re: Python and Django on Heroku

#28

Post by frisco » Wed, Sep 28, 2011, 9:30 PM UTC

You always have to work with the information available at the time, and personal tolerances for risk, but Heroku has become a case study in selling too early.

Re: Python and Django on Heroku

#29

Post by willlll » Wed, Sep 28, 2011, 9:30 PM UTC

mhoofman wrote: post #6

Heroku's cedar stack can now detect apps using: * Ruby * Node.js * Clojure * Python * Go ?? * Scala * PHP * Java * Perl ?? Anything missing here? That covers a lot of whats out there.

Logo. http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2011/4/1/announcing_heroku_f...

Re: Python and Django on Heroku

#30

Post by fdr » Wed, Sep 28, 2011, 9:50 PM UTC

aashay wrote: post #25

bad_user wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I don't like Google App Engine, but I can understand its value -- it has reasonable free quotas (even now, after the pricing scheme changed), and your app ends up running on Google's infrastructure which is rock solid. However, I never understood why people like Heroku ... it's like renting instances on EC2, only 10 times more expensive. Of course, people then start enumerating a whole bunch of stuff that…

"it's like renting instances on EC2" False. I'd suggest you take a look at their architecture overview. It's not like renting instances on EC2 at all because dynos != virtual machines. http://www.heroku.com/how "Of course, people then start enumerating a whole bunch of stuff that they don't have to worry about when using Heroku. However, when starting out, configuring a server is just like configuring your localhost…

At Heroku, free applications get idled out when no request comes in for a while. As a result, when the first request comes in after some time, it can take a few seconds to find a piece of iron to run the process on, run it, and hook up all the tubes.

The advantage is you get to run arbitrary code rather than, say, serve static pages, though.