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Life after Heroku: What's a dev to do?

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Re: Life after Heroku: What's a dev to do?

#81

Post by larrymyers »

franciscop wrote: post #69
larrymyers wrote: post #35

The article calls out having to learn how to create a Docker image for Fly.io as though it's a bad thing. I consider it a huge bonus if you like taking advantage of free tiers for services. The whole point is that if you're going to take advantage of a free tier you should do so in a way that switching is trivial. Docker goes a long way to achieving that. I personally just pay $10/month to Linode and self host these…

As someone who uses Node.js and is in the exact same situation as the author, requiring Docker is the #1 reason I'm not going with Fly.io. There's a standard for launching a Node.js project, and that's running the "start" script `npm start`, so switching is trivial. I switched from a Linux machine to my current MacBook and I didn't have to make a single change in any of my Node.js projects. Adding docker means adding…

I hear you, it's nice to run on a platform that understands how to execute your entrypoint to start your program. Docker helps ensure more than that though.

How do your dependencies get installed? What happens if you depend on something in your package.json that isn't on the public npm repo? What happens if you need to compile some native code as part of one of your dependencies?

Do you need to depend on anything provided by the OS? Timezone data? Maybe you use sqlite as a storage backend and want to ship your database file as well. How do you include configuration data?

Docker drastically simplifies packaging and deployment, and gives you a ton of flexibility in where and how you run your code.

Re: Life after Heroku: What's a dev to do?

#82

Post by UncleEntity »

santoshalper wrote: post #62
Mikeb85 wrote: post #60

$7 is less than a single beer in the pub. If you can afford to devote thousands of hours to learn programming and then hundreds to thousands of hours to build an app then you can afford the hosting cost...

True, I noticed that too. I mean, how low do you value your time to not pay $7/mo for your a project you are spending significant time on? On the other hand... there is a ton of intangible value in the form of knowledge to be gained from switching tech stacks and hosting platforms. So another way to look at it is, this is a chance to re-evaluate and potentially upgrade your tech stack or skils.

> there is a ton of intangible value…

Which is not what I got from TFA, more like their local bar no longer giving away free buffalo wings because people weren’t buying drinks so now they’re shopping for new happy hour specials.

About a month ago I found a tiny VPS for ~$11 for two years which could easily host a pet node app if I were into that sort of thing. $5.50 a year I think it is.

Re: Life after Heroku: What's a dev to do?

#83

Post by topspin »

santoshalper wrote: post #62
Mikeb85 wrote: post #60

$7 is less than a single beer in the pub. If you can afford to devote thousands of hours to learn programming and then hundreds to thousands of hours to build an app then you can afford the hosting cost...

True, I noticed that too. I mean, how low do you value your time to not pay $7/mo for your a project you are spending significant time on? On the other hand... there is a ton of intangible value in the form of knowledge to be gained from switching tech stacks and hosting platforms. So another way to look at it is, this is a chance to re-evaluate and potentially upgrade your tech stack or skils.

So all these "Oh noes Heroku!" posts appearing on HN are over $7/month?

Sigh.

Re: Life after Heroku: What's a dev to do?

#84

Post by franciscop »

larrymyers wrote: post #81
franciscop wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who uses Node.js and is in the exact same situation as the author, requiring Docker is the #1 reason I'm not going with Fly.io. There's a standard for launching a Node.js project, and that's running the "start" script `npm start`, so switching is trivial. I switched from a Linux machine to my current MacBook and I didn't have to make a single change in any of my Node.js projects. Adding docker means adding…

I hear you, it's nice to run on a platform that understands how to execute your entrypoint to start your program. Docker helps ensure more than that though. How do your dependencies get installed? What happens if you depend on something in your package.json that isn't on the public npm repo? What happens if you need to compile some native code as part of one of your dependencies? Do you need to depend on anything pro…

Agreed, if you have a complex project Docker helps standardize it. But if you have A LOT of simple projects where none of your points apply, then it actually makes it all more complex.

Re: Life after Heroku: What's a dev to do?

#85

Post by DangitBobby »

topspin wrote: post #83
santoshalper wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I noticed that too. I mean, how low do you value your time to not pay $7/mo for your a project you are spending significant time on? On the other hand... there is a ton of intangible value in the form of knowledge to be gained from switching tech stacks and hosting platforms. So another way to look at it is, this is a chance to re-evaluate and potentially upgrade your tech stack or skils.

So all these "Oh noes Heroku!" posts appearing on HN are over $7/month? Sigh.

Well most of them (including TFA) are talking about multiple hobby projects. If you've got 5 or so hobby projects, that can start to be a bit much.

Re: Life after Heroku: What's a dev to do?

#87

Post by DangitBobby »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #60

$7 is less than a single beer in the pub. If you can afford to devote thousands of hours to learn programming and then hundreds to thousands of hours to build an app then you can afford the hosting cost...

Much more fruitful discussions had a couple of months ago when this decision was first announced 1. People making the decision to move are basing that on slightly more than just not wanting to pay the cost of a beer each month. Furthermore, free tiers are loss leaders, and removing them predictably has consequences.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32594533

Re: Life after Heroku: What's a dev to do?

#88

Post by DangitBobby »

coupdejarnac wrote: post #68
bcrosby95 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They weren't asking for it.

I don't really care to hear what they have to say on the subject at all. They're freeloaders.

In the article, it says they use Heroku for work and hobby projects. I imagine, like many developers with projects on the side, they try out new tech or platforms on the side and advocate for it at work. In this case, I imagine they used Heroku for hobby projects because it was free and brought it to work (where they could switch seamlessly to a paid tier when usage demanded it) because they liked the platform. On Heroku's side of the fence, I would consider this to be a marketing strategy known as a "loss leader". It's fine for Heroku to take that away, but it's also fine for people to be driven away when the marketing strategy that lured them in is abolished.

I can want free shit. If you offer it, I can use it. If you stop offering it, I can leave and look for more free shit. I can also help other people who want free shit to find it. I can write about it, and you can downvote it if you don't like it. The end.

Re: Life after Heroku: What's a dev to do?

#89

Post by indigodaddy »

charrondev wrote: post #41
ysavir wrote: post #36

My biggest take away from trying to find a Heroku alternative is that Heroku is late to the game of charging for a basic app. Other service might be free, but seem to have some sort of catch--only static, or requires a certain infrastructure, or whatever else--and only Heroku had the unopinionated free tier. And while I haven't used their competitors, I'm skeptical they can match Heroku's interface, CLI, add-on ecosy…

I’ve found Vercel to work well for my personal projects. It’s supports dynamic applications and static ones, custom domains, CI for deployment and has a useable CLI all available on its free tier.

Replit can host any language that it supports (unless I’m reading the verbiage incorrectly at [1]), and custom domains are in the free tier (and ssl I believe).

Throw Cloudflare in front to survive an HN hug as far as bandwidth concerns go for the Replit free tier and you should be looking good.

[1] https://replit.com/site/hosting

Re: Life after Heroku: What's a dev to do?

#90

Post by nix23 »

franciscop wrote: post #69
larrymyers wrote: post #35

The article calls out having to learn how to create a Docker image for Fly.io as though it's a bad thing. I consider it a huge bonus if you like taking advantage of free tiers for services. The whole point is that if you're going to take advantage of a free tier you should do so in a way that switching is trivial. Docker goes a long way to achieving that. I personally just pay $10/month to Linode and self host these…

As someone who uses Node.js and is in the exact same situation as the author, requiring Docker is the #1 reason I'm not going with Fly.io. There's a standard for launching a Node.js project, and that's running the "start" script `npm start`, so switching is trivial. I switched from a Linux machine to my current MacBook and I didn't have to make a single change in any of my Node.js projects. Adding docker means adding…

I installed FreeBSD on a OCI arm machine, made two Jail templates (iocage) and deploy everything that way, backup or redeployment to another host is as easy as zfs-send.

Oracle a problem? No, because my Jails can wander to Vultr, Hetzner (yes they sill support FreeBSD) and Amazon andandand, the only change is a DNS one.

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