aashay

What are your plans in case of emergencies?

I'm beginning to wonder if Heroku is going to bother with this any time soon. The default version is _still_ 0.4.7 [1] and personally I'm starting to feel the pressure to update, especially considering recent performance improvements.

[1] https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/nodejs-versions

For anyone who isn't familiar with git, I can see how that could be confusing. Other than that, the "How It Works" page (which is what I assume you mean by signup page) is mostly just explaining the secret sauce, and doesn't really matter that much to the end user (developers). All that matters is gem install heroku, heroku create, git push heroku master (etc).

"it's like renting instances on EC2"

False. I'd suggest you take a look at their architecture overview. It's not like renting instances on EC2 at all because dynos != virtual machines. http://www.heroku.com/how

"Of course, people then start enumerating a whole bunch of stuff that they don't have to worry about when using Heroku. However, when starting out, configuring a server is just like configuring your localhost development environment. You just have to start with something that works, then gradually keep learning."

This may be fine for some, but for those that _don't_ want to worry about sysadmin work and want to focus on rapid iteration, Heroku makes more sense. Besides, it's not the initial configuration that is the most painful, it's the maintenance and cost associated with managing your own virtual instances, and infrastructure pieces such as reverse proxies, caches, etc.

"since GitHub's servers don't go sleeping when unused."

I'm not even sure what this means. Can you elaborate?

I still find Dotcloud's pricing violently expensive (and I have a free VIP plan). YMMV I guess.

Scala works on Heroku: https://github.com/lstoll/heroku-playframework-scala

Nice, thanks!

This is pretty neat, but it'd be more useful if it had some basic category filtering. That way I could filter out all the electrical engineery stuff from the other stuff, for example.

Pyrex is a Corning brand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrex

One of the draws to Mongo for me is that there are already existing cloud-managed service providers (MongoLab, MongoHQ) that hook in to Heroku, which is my choice for deployment. I haven't found any real cloud-managed services for Riak except Joyent's smart machines (which are expensive for my small project budget). The other reason was Mongoose, a great ODM for Node.JS that makes my life a lot easier.

Of course if anyone has managed to hook into a Riak provider on Heroku I'd love to be proved wrong.

And yes, I could always spin up an EC2 instance and manage a Riak cluster myself, but my time is constrained and I'd rather focus on getting my app out the door than sysadmin tasks.

Presumptuous. I, just like many HNers like me, have more than just a "clue" about what I'm ordering, and I love Apple products.

As a sidenote, I hear these types of statements a lot from those in the anti-Apple crowd, but I can't remember the last time I heard someone switch _away_ from Apple products say things like this.

Anecdotal: I remember seeing this from KLM a little while ago. They take customer service (not necessarily even support) to an extreme by committing random acts of kindness for passengers waiting in terminals: http://surprise.klm.com/

Yes, and it's brilliantly easy. Cedar stack is a pleasure to work with.

The best part about using Heroku for NodeJS apps is that I can focus more on writing my app code and less on sysadmin-related tasks. I don't have to worry very much about provisioning or scaling ("heroku scale web=2" tadaaa).

The downsides include cost (this depends on a variety of factors of course, e.g. what 3rd party plugins you're using) and lack of "control" (if you care about that sort of thing). Also, they don't support WebSockets (yet).

<self-promotion-warning> My Node Knockout app is running nodejs/mongo/redis/socket.io (resorting to long-polling since Heroku doesn't support Websockets, but it's quick enough): http://restalytics.com (sorry, the home page is kinda busted, but scroll down to the bottom and log in with nkodemo@restalytics.com/nkodemo if you'd like to see a working demo. Modern browsers only). </self-promotion-warning>

Edit: I'm linking to my app to show you an example of a working NodeJS app on Heroku, but I've wrapped it in a self-promotion-warning regardless to preemptively fend off any downvotes that I might get as a result of people misunderstanding my intentions.

Edit2: Full disclosure, I happen to work at Salesforce.com.

Don't forget that Heroku's "PORT" is a string while app.listen will expect an int. Easy fix, just parseInt(process.env.PORT).

This may be somewhat petty but...isn't using the term "App Store" a bit risky? Apple owns the trademark on that: http://www.apple.com/legal/trademark/appletmlist.html

It's lame, I know, but better safe than sorry.

I find Evernote/Simplenote more effective for brain dumps. Evernote is especially useful for storing diagrams and photos of whiteboard diagrams.

I literally lol'd

Anybody try writing an iPhone app with MoonScript -> Lua -> Wax -> Objective C?

How does this compare to other persistent key-value stores such as Membase?

Browserling is some seriously impressive work. Congrats and thank you for all the Node.JS open-source work too!

How is this different from using Google Apps for your domain? You're simply giving your email hosting to tuffmail as opposed to google.

There's plenty they could conceivably do with their cash.

See here: http://www.quora.com/What-would-make-sense-for-Apple-to-use-...

Just curious, but why'd you decide to use nginx instead of a node-based web server (i.e. serving stuff up via Express)?

>“Over months and months, he inflicted unfathomable psychic damage, making the victims feel vulnerable in their own home, while avoiding detection.”

So he's a hacker AND has psychic powers? Man oh man.

A comparison chart of features against competition (both web and non) like Billings, Harvest, Ballpark, and other services (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_time_tracking_sof...) would be useful.

> Yes, the vague idea that we can win the hot chick will drive many, many long dark nights of building a company.

If this qualifies as your motivation criteria for building a company, you're most likely in it for the wrong reasons. There's a difference between taking "the enormous energy available as the sex drive and convert[ing] it into useful work" and letting your sex drive be a motivator to your success.

This is pretty neat. Maybe I'm just bad at CTRL+F but what tool(s) were used to produce this?

EDIT: I assume it was http://code.google.com/p/codeswarm/

Why do you keep calling it an Android device? The article clearly states it's a Windows 7 Mobile device-specific app.

Getting a place like that last-minute in SF is going to be very difficult. It's difficult enough finding apartments in SF even if you plan ahead.

+1 to CouchSurfing and AirBnB. Just keep an eye on Craigslist.

If you don't work in the city proper, consider living outside of the city. Emeryvill and Berkeley are good bets. Be weary of Oakland as some parts are sketchy and unsafe. South Bay has several cities too but that may end up being pricey.

>I don't know how it works with node

FYI (for the curious) you just declare dependencies with npm using package.json. It's easy! http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/node-js#declare_depende...