Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)

#1

Post by jnl » Mon, Feb 23, 2009, 8:50 PM UTC

Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)
blog.heroku.com

Re: Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)

#2

Post by jseifer » Mon, Feb 23, 2009, 9:23 PM UTC

The figure that are stated in the article are quite obviously made up but conceivably close to real life scenarios. I think the author is way off on the last example, though: "It then takes just one person a few days to provision new resources from IT or a fast-moving hosting company, install the default web stack, and do the initial deploy." I can see that for an IT department but not for a fast-moving hosting company. With all of the deployment tools available, most of the deployments I've done have ranged from a few minutes (RailsMachine) to a few hours (barebones install). All that aside, though, instant deployment would be pretty darn cool.

Re: Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)

#3

Post by gruseom » Mon, Feb 23, 2009, 9:23 PM UTC

Has software development really gotten 160x faster in the last 10-15 years? It's a moving target, of course, since people keep trying more ambitious things as tools get more powerful. But that number doesn't feel right to me.

On the other hand, the main argument - that the percentage of effort occupied by deployment has grown - may not need that figure.

Re: Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)

#4

Post by teej » Mon, Feb 23, 2009, 9:29 PM UTC

I get your point: the deployment-to-development ratio has increased as we've streamlined development processes faster than deployment processes. I understand the underlying theme, Heroku is going to kickass in deployment. More power to you.

Here's what bothered me about this post:

- Scrum fanboyism. It was unexpected and threw me off track while I was reading. I felt it negatively detracted from your point.

- Capistrano bashing. You certianly gave Cap it's due, but calling it an "incremental improvement" compared to what you've got in store takes balls. We'll see how that pays off.

I know this is just a preface to some (hopefully) technical articles about your work, but on it's own, it's just fuzzy math and hype. Here's to some meat in the next one.

Re: Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)

#5

Post by falsestprophet » Mon, Feb 23, 2009, 9:31 PM UTC

Once every hundred years media changes!

I wish people would stop conjuring up mathematical models to add drama to their observations.

Firstly, mathematics makes for poor theater. Secondly, the silly models distract from otherwise sensible observations: media changes and development gets faster.

But, in the end, the only sensible sweeping generalization may be past performance does not guarantee future results.

Re: Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)

#6

Post by jamesheroku » Mon, Feb 23, 2009, 9:46 PM UTC

teej wrote: post #4

I get your point: the deployment-to-development ratio has increased as we've streamlined development processes faster than deployment processes. I understand the underlying theme, Heroku is going to kickass in deployment. More power to you. Here's what bothered me about this post: - Scrum fanboyism. It was unexpected and threw me off track while I was reading. I felt it negatively detracted from your point. - Capistr…

Awesome comment. Wow, "scrum fanboyism" is definitely not what I was going for there - just trying to poke fun at how these teams have changed over the years.

Yes, the technical details are on the way - we're excited to share them.

Re: Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)

#7

Post by okeumeni » Mon, Feb 23, 2009, 10:29 PM UTC

The historic argument you guys are trying to push trough to enhance your pitch is shadowing the purpose of your heroku itself because of its controversial nature.

I will advise you remove the whole history thing from your argument and take a different approach of selling your tool which I think has good potential.

Re: Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)

#8

Post by volida » Mon, Feb 23, 2009, 10:51 PM UTC

Are these numbers based on speculation?

Since when serious applications are written in 1 week in 2008? You could write 1-week applications since the dawn of computing. Haven't you heard? BASIC was written by B. Gates and P. Allen in 8 weeks.

Re: Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)

#9

Post by Hexstream » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 12:11 AM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #3

Has software development really gotten 160x faster in the last 10-15 years? It's a moving target, of course, since people keep trying more ambitious things as tools get more powerful. But that number doesn't feel right to me. On the other hand, the main argument - that the percentage of effort occupied by deployment has grown - may not need that figure.

Considering there are things you can do with web apps now that you couldn't do at all in 1996, I'd say for some use cases web development is now "infinitely" faster.

Re: Heroku: Why Instant Deployment Matters (YC W08)

#10

Post by melvinram » Tue, Feb 24, 2009, 12:14 AM UTC

Comment I left on the post:

As a potential customer, instant deployment is not what appeals to me. If I knew that 1 day after my code was done, my app would be working just perfectly, I'd be a happy camper. Instant deployment = cool but not mission critical... at least not for me. (Now, if deployment took 2 weeks, I'd be pissed.)

What appeals to me about Heroku is exactly what I like about my MacBook Pro: It just glides. I don't have to think about it. Things just work (at least in theory.) It's not the time, but the thinking about deployment that I'd like to remove.

I just click the magic deploy button (command) and tada, "It's a live." And if I hit the jackpot and land a massive client or show up on TechCrunch, things will just keep on gliding smoothly. And hopefully, I'll make more money and serve more clients.

That is the ideal I'd like to reach.

Now instant deployment might be something I fall in love with (like git) but I'm not there yet. I just want things to "just work" for now.