Heroku has a revision system as of the last update. You can also edit on local machines via a gem that synchs up to Heroku, though I haven't tried this. You can also snapshot your app at any point and export for additional backup. I've been satisfied with what I have now.
For a brand new hacker, Heroku lets you spend more time learning rails and building your idea and no time with system admin. Depending on what you want to learn first, that might be a good thing. You can always pull it out later with an export and part ways.
"For the first time, you can use any interface to edit a Rails application directly on the web, rather than rewriting the code offline, then uploading it to your host."
This seems super cool, especially for rapid prototyping, but does Heroku support any source control? I would be pretty nervous about updating a live application on the fly like that, having made some incredibly stupid changes to live code in my younger days (and that involved three steps, as opposed to one).
My complaint with it when I was messing around with it was I wasn't about to sit the and type into a textfield and not use some-sort of editor. But it appears they fixed that. I just wonder how useful it will be to working on the deployed copy, I mean your site would be giving off all sorts of fun errors to the people coming to your site if your sitting there messing the the script.
I'm a brand new hacker who's learning ruby/rails to develop my first web app. I haven't yet gotten to the point of deployment (or even thinking about deployment). For someone like me, what are the pros and cons of using Heroku versus a traditional host? I've got lots of time and am eager to learn, but with so many different pieces to the startup puzzle, I'm wondering where exactly to best allocate it.
This is the only hacker-focused startup that I've seen from YCombinator that I really understand the market for. I consider it most likely to succeed among the hacker-focused startups. It exists in a growing market niche (rails developers) and solves a crucial problem (easy rails deployment).
Wouldn't hackers be miore comfortable with a local, highly customized development set-up; scp, ssh , etc. + assorted tools for deployment; and want to use their own revision control system?
For a brand new hacker, Heroku lets you spend more time learning rails and building your idea and no time with system admin. Depending on what you want to learn first, that might be a good thing. You can always pull it out later with an export and part ways.