Planting New Platform Roots in Cloud Native with Fir

It’s easy to underestimate the immense effort of building and operating the machinery that Fir aims to abstract away. Early on, Adam Wiggins (Heroku Co-Founder) wrote about the compounding effects of “Ephemeralization” (https://adam.herokuapp.com/past/2011/4/7/ephemeralization/) -- how technological advancements enable us to “do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing.” When I worked at Heroku, this philosophy was a cornerstone of our approach to simplifying developers’ lives. Yet, it was also incredibly complex to refactor our own software stacks and operational practices atop new advancements.

I’m sure it took a lot of perseverance for the team to launch Fir despite naysayers and competitors claiming Heroku was no longer relevant after the 2022 security incident, and the previous era of lackluster investment from Salesforce. It’s exciting to see Heroku continue to evolve the platform with a principled approach. Fir doesn’t just update the tech stack; it reinforces Heroku’s core mission to maximize developer productivity by minimizing distractions. It’s not just about doing more with less. It’s about enabling developers (and operators) to focus on what’s important without getting bogged down by the ever-growing complexities of cloud-native development.