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Ask HN: Review my startup, Devver.net: Accelerated Ruby testing

19 points by bhb ↗ HN
http://devver.net

Sorry that the service isn't actually available to play around with yet (it's in private beta). If you sign up for our beta list, we'll work to get you an invite as soon as we can.

That aside, what do you think of the idea and site? What isn't clear? What questions do we need to answer?

Thanks in advance for your help! Ben

18 comments

[ 7.9 ms ] story [ 84.2 ms ] thread
timmaah
Looks very useful.

How about some real world stats, showing that a particular app on a local machine takes X secs to run tests, while with devver it now only takes X

I've just started a new project and am really digging into test for the first time. Tests do seem overly slow, but I'm never sure if its something I'm doing wrong or what. Devver might not help me though as I'm on a horrendously slow connection.

bhb
Thanks for the feedback! We've been meaning to add some real-world comparisons, but haven't gotten to it yet. Good to know that they would be valuable.
lloyddobbler
Hey, Ben -

I'm no developer (actually an interactive copywriter), but I know enough about Ruby to hold a decent conversation.

I agree with timmah - you adequately convey what Devver does, but you're not really giving enough of a value proposition. It just needs a little more "sizzle" to show them why they really NEED to use Devver.

I'm sure some more coder-types will chime in here, but overall, I think it describes the service very well. Good luck!

Kipp

bhb
Awesome feedback. We'll work on adding more info to really make the value proposition clear.
BrettFromTibet
I'm not a Ruby developer so I can't say how well it speaks to that market... but in terms of communicating the idea quickly/clearly and seeming credible - it scores very well. The design is good, not exceptional or super Web styling.
csbartus
I'm a Ruby developer and guessing Devver is for large codebase only, for small code tests are running pretty fast on local machine.

A good point would be on the first screen to specify what kind of tests you are supporting: unit tests, rspec, features etc.

bhb
You're right - we're currently focused on large code bases with tests that take a few minutes or more. If your tests run in a second, there isn't much we can do for you.

Good idea about specifying RSpec, etc on the front page.

Thanks for the feedback!

akronim
Maybe it's just me, but "4 times faster" sounds better than "in 25% of the time".
latortuga
That's actually what I came to post too because "Get your Ruby test results in 25% of the time" actually has an alternative, much more negative parsing. Hint: what happens the other 75% of the time?
bhb
That's a good point. We've been thinking about how to express the speedup more clearly. This is super helpful.
delano
You may want to consider supporting .gems files for specifying additional gem dependencies since that's what Heroku uses. Their customers would potentially be interested in your product also and I couldn't imagine they'd want to maintain two dependencies files.

Is there a way to specify how the tests are split across test machines or the order in which tests are run?

wastedbrains
Yeah we currently support GemInstaller and Rails built in gem dependencies. We talked a bit with Heroku and hopefully we can figure out if it is best to support the .gems directly or through some geminstaller compatibility layer.
bhb
There is not currently a way to specify the way tests are split across machines or the order. We're working on a solution but it hasn't been a problem yet for our current users.

Or we might just spin it as a feature - we find order dependencies in your tests!

cl3m
You should really try to buy devver.com (godaddy parked site), it will give you more credibility...
wastedbrains
We have but trust me the price they are asking is unreasonable.
wlievens
Aren't people concerned about sending their code off to your servers? I know that would be a huge issue with many companies.

You're basically competing with LSF, which is well-supported but quite expensive. Maybe you should consider broadening to more languages?

bhb
You're right, it is a concern for many companies. However, as services like GitHub, EngineYard, and Heroku show, many companies are willing to send their code to 3rd party services if the value proposition is compelling and the security is good.

In the future, we're certainly going to work to support more languages, but we felt it was important to focus on a single language early on.