Developing a web app is no small task…unless you have a small web app to develop! Increasingly, Ruby is being used as the cloud platform of choice, and several micro platforms have been spun off as tools to develop fast, clean, tiny apps. Camping is a micro framework for Ruby, while Sinatra is essentially a library that incorporates everything you need to start working with GET/POST HTTP requests.
Once you’ve developed your micro app, deployment becomes an interesting quandary. Why overpay for a Virtual Private Server (VPS) so you can install all the necessary runtimes, when your web app is actually small enough to run on the most basic of shared hosting accounts? That’s where Heroku comes in. Heroku lets you deploy your apps right from GitHub with just two lines of code, and you can scale your piece of the server pie from a basic free slice to a big slice. It’s a great way to invest small for your small projects and get them running ASAP.
