Thanks for the links, but these things are such a far cry from Heroku.

Here is the Getting Started page for Capistrano:

https://github.com/capistrano/capist...etting-Started

It immediately assumes you know all sorts of server admin ****. Right out the gate, it's POSIX-compatible shells this, Capfile that. Wtf? I just want my application to start working on a server. I need docs that say, "Hi, welcome you moron developer! Here are the steps you need to take to get your locally working app working on a server"

Anybody else have any problems getting eclipse to run on 64-bit win7? For me it crashes directly at start up. And yes I downloaded the 64 bit versions

Yeah, I only referenced them to show you it's possible to roll your own git deployment without Heroku.

It's definitely more annoying to setup but I looked at the Heroku FAQ for node.js earlier and while it looks pretty easy to setup I still need to worry about half a dozen or more Heroku-specific commands to set it all up.

I just want to roll my face on the keyboard and do what I do on my local server, not learn Heroku.

Homework is homework IMO. I'll choose homework that will help me in cases where I'm not tied into Heroku (more general purpose).

Another pretty big negative is you're tied into the version they use. They are still using v4.7 of node.js. There has been nearly half a year's worth of stable releases since then.

sounds like their node.js support is not like their normal offering. with a basic rails app you can literally "git push" it and it works.

This is false. There can be a very big difference in the time it takes to learn something - and that difference in time is usually expensive.

do any of those sprintloops/heroku places support build-streams or continuous deployment?

thanks!

Springloops is basically just a post-commit hook script built into the repo, so it's not a Capistrano or Hudson replacement. The main benefits of it (as gaming_mouse and I have talked about) are the very useful/simple UI and navigation of the repos.

ETA: I've written my own post-commit hook script in PHP for use in Github (which supports it) but some of my projects are private, so instead of paying for Github (which supports Git only obv) I pay for Springloops which has a superior UI, built-in post commit hooks, and supports Subversion and Git.

What's the difference between spending 2-3 hours on Heroku's site exploring their platform's docs and fooling around with it vs spending 2-3 hours on Google figuring out how to install something on linux?

In both cases you're spending 2-3 hours.

It's possible we just come from 2 different worlds. The world I live in does not support paying an extra $150/month to have an unproven / non-profit generating web site put online that requires a small staff to keep it updated.

For an unfunded start up $150/month is a lot of money. If it was an established company that's already making decent $ then maybe it wouldn't be a big deal.

Most non-technical startup founders are really really tight with their money. They might have a crummy job just barely making rent/bills. Maybe they bring in a partner to help front some $ for development costs. You think they will be happy when you tell them "oh yeah, from day 1 it's going to cost around $200/month to have your site hosted.".

His point is that it might be 2-3 hours for Heroku but 20-30 hours to configure something on Linux.

Indeed.

It also depends on what kind of startup you are. For instance in our case we want to get a solid core product to users (and investors) as soon as possible - if I can spend $150 to get myself an extra day to work on something else I'll do it in a second.

It's the same reason we outsource all of our design and html/css work - the small drop in quality and couple of hundred of dollars in outsourcing work is worth it to save us a little bit of time to work on things that really need us.

Edit: On top of that, it can sometimes be worth it to go with a known quantity that might be a little bit more expensive than an unknown quantity that is a bit cheaper.

Nothing wrong with outsourcing. I would choose to do that in a heartbeat too. It adds up though, If you're paying $200 instead of $50 a month for 6 months now we're talking about $900.

$900 is enough to hire some shlub to do grunt work for your business part time for a month.

$200/month is peanuts

If you were billing customers for developer time, that's under two hours. For some bigger firms, that's less than an hour.

Are you really advocating that it's better to pay someone $900 (which is like a day or two of someone not very good) then paying a service to do it for you? You think that will get you better quality and reliability?

The difference could be $9000 and it would still probably be better to pay heroku than hiring some consultant or outsourcer to set up and maintain your servers (although probably not better than learning to do it yourself at that point).

unless you're a massive baller of a developer, with a huge hourly and far more coding lined up than you could ever do - but also who is also weirdly limited (able to master ruby in days but can't make head nor tail of a command line in a week) - surely it's way better to learn how to do sysadmin + automation tasks

DaveT - good luck! I guess what you have there though is not some abomination of a site made by a retartd (well, it kinda is), but a "normal" 2002? era web site complete with a million nested html tables and nasty CSS

but TBH I'm not surprised if there's plenty web designers out there who will do HTML + CSS, but not PHP + database. I'm the other way round, terrible at "design" unless I've got an exact picture of what it should look like, and even then it's a huge pain in the ass for me to be doing CSS hackery to make things look right. I far prefer making things "work". And in the past few posts we've got a developers who are great at making programs won't go near sysadmin tasks.

That's my philosophy too dave. It makes no sense how someone can call themselves a developer but also be 1 step above a soccer mom when it comes to setting up the tools they use to program with.

It makes even less sense that people will pay so much for this service. Maybe I need to shift gears towards being a freelance sys admin rather than programmer.

I'd love to get paid $100+/hour to install some software.

I find it mind-boggling that you guys don't grasp how its not a good use of resources for lots of companies (especially small ones) to spend a week learning how to do this stuff.

When we were consulting we were billing out at $150-$300/hour (depending on project). Right now by building our own product that's still our opportunity cost. If we're not meeting that with our own product (in terms of expected value - nothing's guaranteed in a start-up obviously) then we're doing something wrong.

It's not that I can't learn to do sys admin stuff. But I have years of experience as a developer, I'm good at it, and it's what I get paid for. ****ing around with things outside my expertise that I can just pay somebody else for, at less than what the lost time programming costs, is foolish.

I guess if you only do one project on one server, of course it makes sense to pay someone else for the job. but this heroku is ongoing cost. I guess that doesn't matter if you're above breakeven. but it kinda does, you'd be more above breakeven with the cheaper DIY setup. it really doesn't matter if you're making $$$ hand over fist.

I view it like an espresso machine though. if you only ever drink one, it is of course a huge waste of money to buy a $2K gaggia to make it and it'd be way better to just grab a standard $3 starbucks. but if you have 4 a day to aid with the coding, yeah you lost a 5x $100 hourly while you learned how to work it instead of coding, but after 2 years you're ~$6k richer. and you've been having superior coffee.

Yeah. I also think it's not fair to compare costs like that either.

Zurvan, you're basically saying that every millisecond you're awake you're on the clock billing someone for $100/hour (or whatever you rate yourself at).

If it took you 4 hours to install linux it cost you $400, but maybe you hired someone for $100/hour but they only took 2 hours so it cost you $200 which means you saved $200.

Where do you draw the line though? Can I say I make $20-30 month extra if I poop and brush my teeth at the same time because I save a few minutes per day? No, that's kind of ridiculous but you're pretty much saying this exactly.

why? the two skillsets are independent. why not just say, how can someone call themselves an expert in html/CSS when they can't setup an nginx server to serve the pages they create?

"why would you pay heroku to handle sysadmin tasks for you? set up a server, done, ez game" : real sysadmins :: "why would you pay a programmer to build the backend for you? set up an access database, done, ez game" : real developers

certainly true; i don't agree with what shoe lace and others are saying (nor do i agree with jjshabado's "we **** hours and can't spend $2 on a nice ethernet cable because we're a startup" mentality), but heroku's pricing IS ridiculous even for people who don't want to get their hands dirty with sysadmin tasks, and this attitude is reflected by a lot of tech startups i've dealt with here

Oh, FFS, where did I say anything like that?

We're talking about extra costs in the area of a few hundred dollars and extra time in the area of a few days.