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Let’s Debug a Node.js Application

There are always challenges when it comes to debugging applications. Node.js' asynchronous workflows add an extra layer of complexity to this arduous process. Although there have been some updates made to the V8 engine in order to easily access asynchronous stack traces, most of the time, we just get errors on the main thread of our applications, which makes debugging a little bit difficult. As well, when our Node.js applications crash, we usually need to rely on some complicated CLI tooling to analyze the core dumps.

In this article, we'll take a look at some easier ways to debug your …

Ground Control to Major TOML: What Is a TOML File and Why Do Buildpacks Use TOML?

YAML files dominate configuration in the cloud-native ecosystem. They’re used by Kubernetes, Helm, Tekton, and many other projects to define custom configurations and workflows. But YAML has its oddities, which is why the Cloud Native Buildpacks project chose TOML as its primary configuration format.

What is TOML?

TOML stands for Tom’s Obvious, Minimal Language. It’s a configuration file format created to be simple, readable, and predictable. Designed for humans first and machines second, TOML avoids syntactic ambiguity and is easy to understand even at a glance.

The format uses a key-value structure and supports sections, arrays, and nested tables. Its …

How a Live Tutoring Platform Helps the Working World Get Ahead

In today's global economy, English proficiency unlocks opportunity. People all over the world are motivated to improve their English skills in order to make a better life for themselves and their families. Cambly is a language education platform that helps millions of learners advance their careers by connecting them with English-speaking tutors from a similar professional background.

For many language learners, speaking is often the hardest skill to improve in a classroom setting. Conversation time is limited, and students tend to practice with each other rather than with a teacher. Some students may not have a fluent speaker available in …

Making Time to Save You Time: How We Sped Up Time-Related Syscalls on Dynos

I work on Heroku’s Runtime Infrastructure team, which focuses on most of the underlying compute and containerization here at Heroku. Over the years, we’ve tuned our infrastructure in a number of ways to improve performance of customer dynos and harden security.

We recently received a support ticket from a customer inquiring about poor performance in two system calls (more commonly referred to as syscalls) their application was making frequently: clock_gettime(3) and gettimeofday(2).

In this customer’s case, they were using a tool to do transaction tracing to monitor the performance of their application. This tool made many such system calls …

Container and Runtime Performance Improvements

Today we’re sharing three performance enhancements that we have recently rolled out to apps running in Private Spaces:

Dynos upgraded to the latest generation infrastructure for 10-15% perf improvement
More consistent performance for Small Private and Shield Space dynos
Optimized clock source selection

Heroku is a fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and we work tirelessly to continuously improve and enhance the experience of running apps on our platform. Unlike lower-level infrastructure-as-a-service systems, improvements are applied automatically to apps and databases and require no action or intervention from app developers to benefit.

That means that no action is required on your part …

How We Added Client Rate Throttling to the Platform API Gem

When API requests are made one-after-the-other they’ll quickly hit rate limits and when that happens:

That tweet spawned a discussion that generated a quest to add rate throttling logic to the platform-api gem that Heroku maintains for talking to its API in Ruby.

If the term “rate throttling” is new to you, read Rate limiting, rate throttling, and how they work together

The Heroku …

New Review Apps: Expanded Options for Greater Control, Automation, and Access

Faster application delivery with remote teams is the key to connect with your customers, now more than ever. A few years ago, we released Review Apps with the goal of improving the application development process and team collaboration. Today, we are excited to announce the release of an improved version of Review Apps to general availability.

The new version of Review Apps provides easier access management with a new permission system, and more flexibility for complex workflows with public APIs. It also no longer needs a staging, production, or placeholder app to host its configuration and collaborator access; this independence …

Climbing Up The Walls: (Not) Remotely Business As Usual

We are living in unprecedented times, and many of us are grappling with a really similar set of complicated and, at times exhausting, emotions. I've been thinking about this a lot since my conversation with Margaret Francis, the SVP of Platform Data Services at Salesforce and former Heroku GM, in our recent podcast for Code[ish].

At Heroku, we have gone from roughly over half of our team being remote, to all of our team being remote. We, along with people all over the world, have suddenly found ourselves working from living rooms, laundry rooms, gardens, garages, sheds, and kitchens. …

Building and Scaling a Global Chatbot using Heroku + Terraform

Text-based communication has a long history weaved into the evolution of the Internet, from IRC and XMPP to Slack and Discord. And where there have been humans, there have also been chatbots: scriptable programs that respond to a user’s commands, like messages in a chat room.

Chatbots don't require much in terms of computational power or disk storage, as they rely heavily on APIs to send actions and receive responses. But as with any kind of software, scaling them to support millions of user’s requests across the world requires a fail-safe operational strategy. Salesforce offers a Live Agent support product …

How Ruckit and Heroku are Modernizing Construction

Alex Hendricks turns up the radio in the cabin of his ‘91 Ford LT8501. He’s drowning out the noise of the construction crew 100ft ahead as they make progress on a brand new bridge in Waco, Texas. Alex isn’t here to take in the sight of fresh new infrastructure. He’s in his truck waiting for the go-ahead to deliver a payload of hot mastic asphalt to the bridge crew.

Alex has a ticket in his hands that needs a sign-off from the project’s contractor — a signature that proves he made his delivery, and on time. Without it, he doesn’t …

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