In an Interesting blog entry by Josh Kenzer - 5 Question Interview with Twitter Developer Alex Payne Alex points out that twitter was built using Ruby on Rails and has run into some Rails database performance issues. I personally don’t think that Alex’s description Rails inability to connect to multiple databases simultaneously is correct as do a lot of people on the Loud Thinking blog discussing Twitter Trouble.

I think Jens Alfke has some interesting points on this same topic in his blog post Twitter, Rails, Hammers, and 11,000 Nails per Second in which he describes Ruby as a lovely language and Rails as a lovely framework that trade performance for aesthetics and convenience. And that these performance problems can be easily remedied via more server hardware.

Why is it that the front end guys (Jens is a self proclaimed client-side developer) never think that there is any consequence to just 'adding more hardware'. Adding more hardware, certainly has a one time costs of purchasing the additional equipment, but it can also have a hidden reoccurring operational cost that can last for the lifetime of the site.

What if I want my language and framework aesthetics and convenience with performance! This seems like a great use for a technology (eg. Enterprise Application Fabric) that could give you the time to market benefits that the convenience-languages (.NET Ruby) and frameworks bring, lower your operational costs, while increasing your processing power...

Until next time...

Mark