Hosting platforms
The aim of this module is to encourage the student to:
- think about operational concerns outside their code
- recognise the dollar cost of running their output
- understand the benefits of externalising assumptions about dependencies
Ultimately, we're introducing the concept of the 12 Factor App and associated DevOps concerns.
We encourage a labs-first approach for this course. The lab is entirely operational and can be done in pairs by following a worksheet. Onboarding a simple Python webapp onto Heroku is simple but has a huge payoff, so is a perfect candidate for lab-first.
The taught section of this course shows the motivation for a container system like heroku - and highlights the gap between local development and production deploy. The next step is potentially a discussion for how to bring the 'exposed dependencies' model back to the local dev environment - perhaps through something like virtualbox.
After completion of this course, the student should be able to:
- Describe the differences between development and production environments
- Set up and deploy a Python web application on a hobby Heroku dynamo
The student should have completed the Intro to Python course, or similar.