An Update on Heroku • Hacker News Board

Re: An Update on Heroku

#231

Post by bjt » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:16 AM UTC

trvz wrote: post #174

betteryet wrote: post #117

Back in the day, Heroku, Stripe, and GitHub were iconic engineering organizations. They had this culture rooted in Unix ethos with a sprinkle of modern minimalism and style that was outstanding. You could really see people give a damn in the careful design and polish of their APIs, docs, primitives, and overall output. Now Heroku and GitHub have been gutted in spirit by their acquirers, which is such a damn shame for…

Amongst the people opting for just plain Linux servers Linode was the big name back then. They later got supplanted by DigitalOcean, and both are of course also run into the ground by now.

Digital Ocean is run into the ground? I've been with them for a long time and recently just launched new stuff. Still a pretty nice experience and a pretty decent price.

Re: An Update on Heroku

#232

Post by bendangelo » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:17 AM UTC

an0malous wrote: post #37

dmathieu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means: go elsewhere, they're dead.

What's the best alternative?

Kamal works well

Re: An Update on Heroku

#233

Post by everfrustrated » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:28 AM UTC

There's very little written history about Heroku but there is this podcast

The Story Of Heroku With Adam Wiggins, co-founder and former CTO of Heroku.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3nEwB6apkvUpwk8W9KgzEF

Re: An Update on Heroku

#234

Post by bigbuppo » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:29 AM UTC

g8oz wrote: post #5

"transitioning to a sustaining engineering model". I don't care what anyone says, it takes real talent to come up with lines like this.

It's what CA/Broadcom does to literally every software product they own.

Re: An Update on Heroku

#235

Post by bigbuppo » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:32 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #148

Why don't they just spin off the company or sell it? Heroku is a well-established brand (despite Salesforce's best efforts) and there are still plenty of customers and hobbyists relying on it today. Its value to the parent company is clearly 0. Give it away and let someone else have a run at it. Keep an ownership stake in case someone does manage to turn it around. Literally zero downside in it.

Sometimes it's best to just let things die.

Re: An Update on Heroku

#236

Post by keithluu » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:34 AM UTC

TIL Salesforce acquires Heroku in 2011, way before I was even a CS graduate. I remember enjoying using the free tier of Heroku for my school projects but also the pain of dyno cold starts.

Re: An Update on Heroku

#237

Post by duxup » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:36 AM UTC

bgentry wrote: post #187

As somebody whose first day working at Heroku was the day this acquisition closed, I think it’s mostly a misconception to blame Salesforce for Heroku’s stagnation and eventual irrelevance. Salesforce gave Heroku a ton of funding to build out a vision that was way ahead of its time. Docker didn’t even come out until 2013, AWS didn’t even have multiple regions when it was built. They mostly served as an investor and le…

> people more concerned with process than results

Sounds like something Steve Jobs observed at apple https://youtu.be/l4dCJJFuMsE?si=QOCBUqcUPWu8AsAX

Re: An Update on Heroku

#238

Post by swat535 » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:41 AM UTC

ojusave wrote: post #87

swat535 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does render compare to fly.io? Does anyone has experience running production rails apps on these?

https://render.com/articles/render-vs-fly-io

Thank you! Can't believe I missed that..

Re: An Update on Heroku

#239

Post by re-thc » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:44 AM UTC

bjt wrote: post #231

trvz wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amongst the people opting for just plain Linux servers Linode was the big name back then. They later got supplanted by DigitalOcean, and both are of course also run into the ground by now.

Digital Ocean is run into the ground? I've been with them for a long time and recently just launched new stuff. Still a pretty nice experience and a pretty decent price.

Yes, they haven’t updated their infrastructure in a long time. Pricing hence isn’t competitive.

With each new generation they fall behind.

Re: An Update on Heroku

#240

Post by re-thc » Sat, Feb 07, 2026, 2:46 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #148

Why don't they just spin off the company or sell it? Heroku is a well-established brand (despite Salesforce's best efforts) and there are still plenty of customers and hobbyists relying on it today. Its value to the parent company is clearly 0. Give it away and let someone else have a run at it. Keep an ownership stake in case someone does manage to turn it around. Literally zero downside in it.

> Literally zero downside in it.

Any poor valuation or negative news can tank the stock price harder than dealing with it privately.