Last time around, I claimed that taking time to set up infrastructure for builds and baby-sitting a CI server was a less than ideal use of your time. However, I will also say this: I deeply believe that the ability to reliably release your application, early & often, with a degree of quality you feel comfortable with, is an essential aspect of development discipline.
At the surface it might look like these two statements are mutually incompatible. However, what if all that it took to get your Rails application on Github, through a build/deploy pipeline, through into an application deployed on Heroku was a couple of clicks? What if someone took the pain of setting up the machines and configuring your CI server away from you? What if, as you added Javascript tests and some Capybara tests, someone automatically detected that you had done that, and set up all that was needed to run those for you?
Enter Snap
Take the cloud, power it with a CD tool behind the scenes, automate build configuration and simplify until only the essentials remain- and let people get on with their lives.
Disclaimer: The statements and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Thoughtworks.