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Rails, and the alternatives mentioned don't really make sense for a messaging application. You wouldn't write the back end for Gchat or AIM in Rails (or PHP, or

Rails, and the alternatives mentioned don't really make sense for a messaging application. You wouldn't write the back end for Gchat or AIM in Rails (or PHP, or Django), either. Rails would be fine as the web front end that talked to another messaging system. I've interviewed with the twitter guys and been to their talks and they definitely are NOT doing the right thing. However, "the right thing" is not easy and there are few people around and available who can do it. edit: their best bet is to try to find someone who is burned out from working on wall street applications.

aneesh 19y ago
Just curious, what would you write the backend for AIM in? I don't have any experience developing messaging-type apps.
- menloparkbum 19y ago
  C.
- yan 19y ago
  Erlang is a fine option. So is C.
  - mosburger 19y ago
    Dang - I was going to say Erlang. This is an ideal application for Erlang... scalability and uptime. There's a reason it's heritage is in the teleco industry.
    - davidw 19y ago
      I went and had a look at the slides for their 'scaling twitter' presentation, and it looks like they had a look at Erlang and reacted with some silly "ooh, it looks ugly" sort of comment. Seems pretty silly to reject something out of hand that is very much along the lines of what you need.
- axod 19y ago
  Java would work extremely well.
joshwa 19y ago
>Rails would be fine as the web front end that talked to another messaging system. Which is exactly what they're doing: http://rubyforge.org/projects/starling/ http://rubyforge.org/projects/starling/
yariv 19y ago
Twitter isn't a messaging application in the traditional sense (as in IM or phone networks) because it doesn't involve real-time synchronous communications. All communications in Twitter are asynchronous as in most database-backed webapps and I think it should be possible to scale Twitter with Rails assuming you know how to scale the database tier. Having said that, it would still be fun to rewrite Twitter in Erlang... :)
fendale 19y ago
Wall street types are used to working on serious hardware though (I am not a wall street person, but work for a fortune 500 type place). One of our Oracle databases sits on a 24 core itanium box That sort of hardware + Oracle can munch through some serious work - perhaps that is the database solution, but I believe it doesn't come cheap!

aneesh 19y ago

Just curious, what would you write the backend for AIM in? I don't have any experience developing messaging-type apps.

menloparkbum 19y ago
C.
yan 19y ago
Erlang is a fine option. So is C.
- mosburger 19y ago
  Dang - I was going to say Erlang. This is an ideal application for Erlang... scalability and uptime. There's a reason it's heritage is in the teleco industry.
  - davidw 19y ago
    I went and had a look at the slides for their 'scaling twitter' presentation, and it looks like they had a look at Erlang and reacted with some silly "ooh, it looks ugly" sort of comment. Seems pretty silly to reject something out of hand that is very much along the lines of what you need.
axod 19y ago
Java would work extremely well.

joshwa 19y ago

>Rails would be fine as the web front end that talked to another messaging system. Which is exactly what they're doing: http://rubyforge.org/projects/starling/ http://rubyforge.org/projects/starling/

yariv 19y ago

Twitter isn't a messaging application in the traditional sense (as in IM or phone networks) because it doesn't involve real-time synchronous communications. All communications in Twitter are asynchronous as in most database-backed webapps and I think it should be possible to scale Twitter with Rails assuming you know how to scale the database tier. Having said that, it would still be fun to rewrite Twitter in Erlang... :)

fendale 19y ago

Wall street types are used to working on serious hardware though (I am not a wall street person, but work for a fortune 500 type place). One of our Oracle databases sits on a 24 core itanium box That sort of hardware + Oracle can munch through some serious work - perhaps that is the database solution, but I believe it doesn't come cheap!