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Someone from Heroku really needs to weigh in on this.

by omfg 14y ago

VeejayRampay 14y ago
Given how bold the claims are, I'd say it'd be best if Heroku reacted quickly, indeed. Cause right now, it seems that the author is either not understanding how Heroku works or ignoring important specifics/nuances inherent to their "secret-sauce" algorithms. Whether the analysis done in the article is sound or the author is actually pushing an agenda remains to be discussed and the sooner the better. I'm also quite wary of the incentive a 20K monthly bill would give you to try and shake Heroku down for a rebate. By the way, the figure in itself seems very high, but out of context it's impossible for me, the reader, to evaluate if that's actually good money or not. Maybe other solutions (handling everything yourself) would actually be WAY more costly, maybe Heroku actually provides a service that is well-worth the money or maybe the author is right and it's actually swindling on Heroku's part, no way to know.
timmaah 14y ago
This is not a new revelation. I got them to admit to it 2 years ago. http://tiwatson.com/blog/2011-2-17-heroku-no-longer-using-a-global-request-queue http://tiwatson.com/blog/2011-2-17-heroku-no-longer-using-a-... and specifically: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/heroku/8eOosLC5nrw/Xy2j7GapebIJ https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/heroku/8eOo...
- VeejayRampay 14y ago
  But then again, those two links don't address the core of the problem: Heroku is used by tons of people around the world. Some of them are paying good money for the service. Given the amount of scrutiny under which they operate, what is the incentive for them to turn an algorithm into a less effective one and still charge the same amount of money in a growing "cloud economy" where companies providing the same kind of service are a dime a dozen (AWS, Linode, Engine Yard, etc)? How does that benefit their business if "calling their BS" is as easy as firing Apache Benchmark, collecting results, drawing a few charts and flat out "prove" that they're lying about the service they provide?? I mean, I doubt Heroku is that stupid, they know how their audience doesn't give them much room for mistakes. So as nice as the story sounds on paper, I'd really like another take on all this, either from other users of Heroku, independent dev ops, researchers, routing algorithms specialists or even Heroku themselves before we all too hastily jump to sensationalist conclusions.
  - timmaah 14y ago
    I didn't jump to any conclusion that they are doing this simply for the money. The only conclusion I jumped to was that they ditched the routing they originally said they had (without telling anyone) and that their routing is worse than what you get as a default from passenger.
    - VeejayRampay 14y ago
      My bad if that wasn't clear in my comment: the sensationalist bit wasn't directed at you but at the general tone of the thread. In fact, I actually upvoted your comment for providing two links highly relevant to the article.
  - j-kidd 14y ago
    This has a simple explanation. Heroku was targeting the ruby-on-rail crowd, which more or less belongs to the "Stupid Rich" quadrant when it comes to hosting / deployment. Meanwhile, AWS has been a dominant presence in the "Stupid Poor" market segment. The other two quadrants do not exist.

Someone from Heroku really needs to weigh in on this.

by omfg 14y ago

Someone from Heroku really needs to weigh in on this.

Given how bold the claims are, I'd say it'd be best if Heroku reacted quickly, indeed. Cause right now, it seems that the author is either not understanding how Heroku works or ignoring important specifics/nuances inherent to their "secret-sauce" algorithms. Whether the analysis done in the article is sound or the author is actually pushing an agenda remains to be discussed and the sooner the better. I'm also quite wary of the incentive a 20K monthly bill would give you to try and shake Heroku down for a rebate. By the way, the figure in itself seems very high, but out of context it's impossible for me, the reader, to evaluate if that's actually good money or not. Maybe other solutions (handling everything yourself) would actually be WAY more costly, maybe Heroku actually provides a service that is well-worth the money or maybe the author is right and it's actually swindling on Heroku's part, no way to know.

timmaah 14y ago

This is not a new revelation. I got them to admit to it 2 years ago. http://tiwatson.com/blog/2011-2-17-heroku-no-longer-using-a-global-request-queue http://tiwatson.com/blog/2011-2-17-heroku-no-longer-using-a-... and specifically: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/heroku/8eOosLC5nrw/Xy2j7GapebIJ https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!msg/heroku/8eOo...

VeejayRampay 14y ago
But then again, those two links don't address the core of the problem: Heroku is used by tons of people around the world. Some of them are paying good money for the service. Given the amount of scrutiny under which they operate, what is the incentive for them to turn an algorithm into a less effective one and still charge the same amount of money in a growing "cloud economy" where companies providing the same kind of service are a dime a dozen (AWS, Linode, Engine Yard, etc)? How does that benefit their business if "calling their BS" is as easy as firing Apache Benchmark, collecting results, drawing a few charts and flat out "prove" that they're lying about the service they provide?? I mean, I doubt Heroku is that stupid, they know how their audience doesn't give them much room for mistakes. So as nice as the story sounds on paper, I'd really like another take on all this, either from other users of Heroku, independent dev ops, researchers, routing algorithms specialists or even Heroku themselves before we all too hastily jump to sensationalist conclusions.
- timmaah 14y ago
  I didn't jump to any conclusion that they are doing this simply for the money. The only conclusion I jumped to was that they ditched the routing they originally said they had (without telling anyone) and that their routing is worse than what you get as a default from passenger.
  - VeejayRampay 14y ago
    My bad if that wasn't clear in my comment: the sensationalist bit wasn't directed at you but at the general tone of the thread. In fact, I actually upvoted your comment for providing two links highly relevant to the article.
- j-kidd 14y ago
  This has a simple explanation. Heroku was targeting the ruby-on-rail crowd, which more or less belongs to the "Stupid Rich" quadrant when it comes to hosting / deployment. Meanwhile, AWS has been a dominant presence in the "Stupid Poor" market segment. The other two quadrants do not exist.