strace on the wire / a system I built by hand / a segfault in time

Title: A Most Peculiar Test Drive with Heroku

February 25, 2013 was just another day in the life of a software engineer, right? Except for me, it felt like a peculiar test drive on some sort of cloud-covered road. I had been working at a startup that was moving to the cloud, and we were all excited about Heroku as our new ride. But boy, did this test drive turn out to be anything but smooth.

You see, Heroku had become the darling of web developers everywhere with its promise of “no server required.” We wanted in on the action and decided that Heroku was going to be the platform for deploying all our applications. So we set off, armed with the 12-factor app methodology, prepared to conquer the world.

But oh, how wrong we were!

As soon as we started pushing code into Heroku, issues began to surface like potholes on a rainy day. One of our applications, which was working flawlessly in development, started throwing errors in production. “But wait,” I thought, “it’s just a matter of tweaking the configuration.” So off I went, trying to find that elusive “right way” to get everything working.

Hours turned into days as I wrestled with environment variables, add-ons, and buildpacks—each one promising a solution but leaving me more confused than before. The 12-factor app seemed like an elegant idea on paper, but the reality was far from it. Our application’s dependencies were not being managed properly, leading to runtime issues that felt like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

One particularly frustrating afternoon, I found myself arguing with my teammates about whether we should switch to another platform altogether or continue this Heroku adventure in hope that things would finally start working. The debate was heated and exhausting. Some of us were passionate about staying the course, while others felt like giving up and moving on.

In the end, we decided to stick it out for a bit longer. We needed this platform for our project, but our experience with Heroku was teaching us some valuable lessons. It wasn’t just about getting things to work; it was also about understanding where the technology failed us and how we could improve.

One thing became clear: the 12-factor app approach didn’t always fit seamlessly into every application’s ecosystem. We started documenting these issues, creating a list of gotchas that would be helpful for others facing similar challenges. In hindsight, this early documentation was more valuable than any single fix or workaround.

Looking back at that peculiar test drive, I can see how Heroku’s rise to prominence in 2013 set the stage for what we now call cloud-native development. The lessons learned then still resonate with me today, reminding me of the importance of understanding the tools you choose and being prepared to adapt as needed.

In those early days, it felt like everything was just a bit too… peculiar. But that’s part of the journey, isn’t it? Embrace the quirks, learn from them, and keep moving forward.

This blog post is a reflection on the challenges faced during the early days of adopting Heroku as our deployment platform in 2013. The era was marked by rapid changes in cloud computing, with Docker just beginning its journey to mainstream adoption, and microservices starting to gain traction. It’s a reminder that even in the most promising technologies, there are always bumps along the way, but learning from those experiences can lead to better solutions down the line.