Moral: to be productive, utilize all the tools you have, and don't waste your hours waiting for feedback from long-running tasks. Don't waste precious time. In the end, only the result is important, not the time spent!

And I achieve that with this little hack. Result is 100%, client is happy, my kid is picked up on time - he is happy (I hope so), my laptop can rest, it is happy too, I guess.

I wrote a simple script, scheduled the task, closed my laptop, and picked up my kid from training on time. That's why I'm in the café now - waiting for him. But I don't want my limited time wasted. I want this time spent with 100% result.

So what do I do? I have an answer today - just run a scheduled task via Heroku scheduler (devcenter.heroku.com/articles/sch...). Schedule it once a day and remove the schedule in a few hours when the script is stopped. That's it!

I still had no idea how to run long-running processes without the risk of the connection dropping. I don't want to have these long-running processes on my laptop - I might want to close it, pack it into my backpack, and go home from this café where I am writing this message.

While I learned from my mistakes in terms of keeping the processes and making the script idempotent (so that when I repeat it, the process continues from where it stops and does not perform the same actions twice).

Nevertheless, I followed this way and it worked. Thanks god the users didn't need to receive the emails thrice!

That's a story from several years ago.

Today, I faced the same task.

Well, naturally, we can split the job into several parts and run them one by one or in parallel. But still, having the scripts run via the Heroku console from a terminal is not an option, as the connection can drop on my side too.

But that's not so bad to bombard users with the same (very useful, though!) email. The main challenge was still there - how do I run this script properly on Heroku if the connection drops in 1 hour, but I have an operation that takes more time?

It turned out there were over 1 million users to whom I needed to send emails. So, in 1 hour, the connection dropped, and I had no idea where it stopped. Some users received emails, and some did not! Repeating the script again would send duplicate emails. What a fault!

This simple and swift measure results in annual savings of $600!

It's essential to remember to 𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗼𝗿𝗽𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 in your Heroku applications to avoid unnecessary costs. By taking prompt action to remove the orphaned 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗦𝗤𝗟 add-on, as shown in the screenshot, expenses on hosting were reduced by $50 immediately, translating to a 15% savings.

Unfortunately, the last step of removing the old add-on is often overlooked, leading to unnecessary expenses. While this oversight may not significantly impact established businesses, costing around $50 𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵, for startups without revenue, it can be a substantial burden.

The process of upgrading the 𝗣𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗦𝗤𝗟 add-on involves several steps:
1. Create a new add-on, replicating the data from the main one;
2. Promote the new add-on to the primary status;
3. Eliminate the old add-on;
4. Remove the old add-on from the application.

One common expense arises from the need to periodically upgrade resources, such as the PostgreSQL add-on. Read further to see how to avoid unnecessary costs.

💡 T͟h͟e͟ ͟l͟e͟s͟s͟o͟n͟: before blaming 𝗥𝘂𝗯𝘆 (or any language), check your 𝗗𝗕 first. That’s usually where the real performance story lives.

👉 The app only ever needed the last 30 days.
T͟h͟e͟ ͟f͟i͟x͟:
🔧 Simply rotate (delete) obsolete data on schedule. Result: an 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝘆, 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲, 𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘀𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 solution — and a 𝗯𝗹𝗮𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗮𝘀𝘁 app again.

An app started running painfully slow. At first, everything was fine — until millions of records piled up over time. The culprit? Automatic stats collection from a 3rd-party service, dumping endless data into the DB.
T͟h͟e͟ ͟c͟a͟t͟c͟h͟:͟ 👉 90% of this data was useless.