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Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move

#81

Post by mnutt »

SiVal wrote: post #32

What this says to me, a non-RoR user, is that it's harder to build websites with Java than with RoR, but if you pass a certain (very unusual) level of traffic, you'll wish you'd made the extra effort; otherwise, you'll be glad you didn't. (Extra effort isn't free.) Fine, but what I wish I understood was why RoR is so popular to begin with. The claim is always that Rails is so wonderful that it's worth learning Ruby j…

> but if you pass a certain (very unusual) level of traffic, you'll wish you'd made the extra effort

I'm not sure that's the case. Perhaps had they started out by trying to scale to their current levels they would never have gotten off the ground. When you start developing a system for a new company your largest obstacle is almost always lack of product/market fit.

Re: Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move

#82

Post by DigitalSea »

I wonder if Node.JS would meet the needs of Twitter? It's marketed as a language for real-time applications that require a lot of concurrent connections and whatnot, not nearly as complicated as Java/Scala either but would it be stable enough to power a site like Twitter? The inner nerd in me is going haywire with the possibilities.

While most won't ever encounter the issues Twitter encountered using Ruby and Ruby on Rails these kinds of articles are very damaging for the Ruby language and Rails framework because even though I primarily still use PHP, Ruby & Rails are something I have a vested interest in as well and this will no doubt push potential newcomers away from the language.

Re: Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move

#83

Post by boyter »

jrockway wrote: post #36
scribu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you worked on other sites with a similar scale to Twitter? If not, how would you know?

I work at Google :)

Based on that I would like to hear how you would do so. Would make an interesting blog post or comment here.

Re: Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move

#84

Post by mnutt »

neya wrote: post #78

This is why I insist people to work on a robust stack from ground up, so it will be less painful in the long run. This is not to say that you shouldn't build a prototype in Rails to get everything up and running as quickly as possible and worry about scaling later, but, it is just my opinion that if you invest the time and effort in working with a robust stack (for example Scala+Lift), your investment will pay you of…

> I like to spend more time expanding/marketing my business than worry about scaling it.

If you're truly more interested in the business side, why don't you build it as quickly as possible in rails/django and then later if it warrants it you can hire some people to build it in lift/something else?

Re: Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move

#85

Post by mytrile »

DigitalSea wrote: post #82

I wonder if Node.JS would meet the needs of Twitter? It's marketed as a language for real-time applications that require a lot of concurrent connections and whatnot, not nearly as complicated as Java/Scala either but would it be stable enough to power a site like Twitter? The inner nerd in me is going haywire with the possibilities. While most won't ever encounter the issues Twitter encountered using Ruby and Ruby on…

Node.js is not a language. And if you think callback spaghetti code is better than clean and concise Scala code, something is wrong with you.

And quote from Node.js creator:

“I want programming computers to be like coloring with crayons and playing with duplo blocks. If my job was keeping Twitter up, of course I’d using a robust technology like the JVM.”

Re: Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move

#86

Post by [deleted] »

pyrotechnick wrote: post #55
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Ruby developer, but I still can't help thinking, "WTF". No technology stack is perfect, but I've yet to meet a stack that was pure evil. There may be some cargo-cult personalities in the Ruby community, but, if there is, it's only because there is value in it. An infinitesimal number of sites have to deal with Twitter's scale problems. The rest can work on getting crap done instead of worrying about Maserat…

argumentum ad populum

[deleted]

Re: Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move

#88

Post by extension »

logn wrote: post #16
gary4gar wrote: post #9

Twitter's better performance is because of a better architecture than Java language. Further, the performance is from JVM, so you can use any of the JVM language including JRuby to get similar effects. This articles seems more like link-bait to me.

I don't think so. Java outperforms JRuby, probably because of typing. See: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u64q/benchmark.php?test=al...

Java probably outperforms JRuby primarily because the JVM was designed and tuned to run Java.

But in any case, if Twitter's architecture is truly scalable then any intrinsic slowness of the language shouldn't be a big problem, because they can just toss more hardware in to compensate. What is a problem is a buggy VM that leaks memory. To run thousands of instances in a heavily instrumented way, the VM must be stable and predictable.

Re: Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move

#89

Post by stock_toaster »

mnutt wrote: post #84
neya wrote: post #78

This is why I insist people to work on a robust stack from ground up, so it will be less painful in the long run. This is not to say that you shouldn't build a prototype in Rails to get everything up and running as quickly as possible and worry about scaling later, but, it is just my opinion that if you invest the time and effort in working with a robust stack (for example Scala+Lift), your investment will pay you of…

> I like to spend more time expanding/marketing my business than worry about scaling it. If you're truly more interested in the business side, why don't you build it as quickly as possible in rails/django and then later if it warrants it you can hire some people to build it in lift/something else?

In addition, startups tend to pivot a few times, and agility is arguably more important early on than raw performance (depending on product of course).

Re: Twitter survives election after Ruby-to-JVM move

#90

Post by thebluesky »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #17
pyrotechnick wrote: post #7

This move marks the beginning of the end of a four year long effort for Twitter to rid themselves of Ruby. History will remember the entire Ruby industry as a series of compounding failures. The de facto formalisation and specifications. The black-box behaviour of core development. The broken-linked, un-versioned docs. The rampant cargo-cult mentality. The arcane exceptions. The meta-frameworks. Gem hell. 1.9/2.0 Rai…

I'm not a Ruby developer, but I still can't help thinking, "WTF". No technology stack is perfect, but I've yet to meet a stack that was pure evil. There may be some cargo-cult personalities in the Ruby community, but, if there is, it's only because there is value in it. An infinitesimal number of sites have to deal with Twitter's scale problems. The rest can work on getting crap done instead of worrying about Maserat…

> No technology stack is perfect, but I've yet to meet a stack that was pure evil.

As someone who has seen Ruby cause major problems I'd have to say it's not too far off "pure evil"

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