I was told Ruby on Rails has limitation in scalability. What exactly
is hindering RoR to scale up (is it true that Twitter switched from
RoR to Scala)? Any solution or active projects to resolve scalability
issues?
Nope Twitter didn’t switch. They still run Ruby on Rails. They also
use scala as they run rails under the jvm AFAIK. If you really want
the skinny google is your friend here.
On Mon, Apr 25, 2011 at 11:25 AM, jcBAM [email protected] wrote:
I was told Ruby on Rails has limitation in scalability. What exactly
is hindering RoR to scale up (is it true that Twitter switched from
RoR to Scala)? Any solution or active projects to resolve scalability
issues?
Well, if you have a specific issue bring it on, I am sure you will get
some
takers and help here. As well you can have scalability issues in any
framework or language, it just depends what you are trying to do and
also
how it was coded. I would guess that a very high % of rails apps never
hit
the limits of what rails can do.
On Apr 25, 12:25pm, jcBAM [email protected] wrote:
I was told Ruby on Rails has limitation in scalability…
As does everything else, I would say.
A reasonable practice is to build you app, then profile it when it
becomes slow. See where the speedups are: maybe it’s MySQL settings,
more RAM on the servers, more hardware/instances, tighter Ruby.
If, in your profiling, you identify a routine - or subsystem that you
really can’t get speed out of, figure out how to write it in something
else. Maybe you - as Twitter has - spin off to another language for
parts of your app. Maybe you write a gem in C to get that speed boost.
Maybe node.js, for high concurrent connections in a special case.
There’s also knowing what Rails is good at, and what it’s not. For
example, this weekend a client and I were talking about how to
implement a live widget (ala Facebook’s news feed). We talked for a
little bit about how Rails doesn’t make that kind of thing easy, and
ended up looking at http://www.pusher.com to provide that
functionality in the app. However, I believe that knowledge comes from
knowledge/experience of how the web works, known-how on the Rails
side, plus knowledge of your own application and goals.
In short: premature optimization is the route of all evil (except when
it’s not) 
Hope this helps,
_Ryan W.
On Apr 25, 12:25pm, jcBAM [email protected] wrote:
I was told Ruby on Rails has limitation in scalability. What exactly
is hindering RoR to scale up?
I think this is a question better directed to the FUD-merchant who
told you this.
–Matt J.
jcBAM
Ruby on Rails is a Killer App and Disruptive technology.
Much in the same way other open source frameworks, operating systems,
web servers, databases offset the market by enabling the developer to
not be locked into a single vender.
#Avoiding_vendor_lock-in_for_computer_software
Twitter suffered a couple brownouts during a time of exponential
growth three years ago. The kind of growth you and I should be so
lucky to one day have with our websites. =)
If micro$oft had it’s way it would get rid of anything in it’s way to
ensure it’s place at the table for as long as it can. The Ruby on
Rails framework goes into direct competition with M$ current line of
developer products and frameworks. It would make sense that during the
brownouts they would inject fud into the blogosphere to protect their
current interests.
A more famous tweet from the co-founder of twitter during that time:
https://twitter.com/#!/ev/statuses/801530348
Once again mind you that this was three years ago.
So the question is does Rails scale?
The answer is undoubtedly YES.
It’s just a framework why wouldn’t it? Frameworks have very little to
do with scaling.
Since it’s an open source framework there is nothing stopping you from
digging deeper into the low level aspect of it and tweak it to your
sites specific needs. Chances are you will never be in that position.
If you are, congratulations, I look forward to reading about it in
Forbes.
As it’s been mentioned I would question the qualifications of the
person who gave you this assessment as they either have no proficiency
in how a full stack web framework works or has an interest in selling
you on a vender lock-in product.
~