4 ms·

The reason is quite simple: they are using Ruby on Rails internally for many parts of the system. As much as I love Rails, it's extremely hard to scale an appl

The reason is quite simple: they are using Ruby on Rails internally for many parts of the system. As much as I love Rails, it's extremely hard to scale an application written in it to handle millions of users. All the Active Record transactions have to be rewritten as database transactions if you want to make sure that the databas doesn't lock the tables for a long time.

alasdair_ 7y ago
Both Twitter and Groupon scaled to many millions of users using RoR. I don't remember it being especially more difficult than scaling any other kind of system to millions of users.
- edf13 7y ago
  Twitter had massive issues scaling. Their blue bird of death was infamous for it. Groupon wasn’t anywhere near real-time that a trading system requires
outworlder 7y ago
> The reason is quite simple: they are using Ruby on Rails internally for many parts of the system. The choice of a language or framework is only one factor on the success of failure of a system. You can write a broker in brainfuck if you are so inclined. You can make it rock solid. Your pick may require more or less engineering resources, but that's all it does. You mention ActiveRecord. That too is premature optimization. Crafting optimized SQL queries will not save a badly architected app. They might even be worse if whoever is optimizing them doesn't fully understand what they are doing. > if you want to make sure that the databas doesn't lock the tables for a long time. You didn't mention which database you are using. You didn't say anything about its schema. This is yet another generalization. Not all databases will "lock the tables", no matter how badly queries are written. And, if they do, optimize that. Usually, only a handful of services are critical. Microservices are all the rage, optimize those to death.

4 ms·

The reason is quite simple: they are using Ruby on Rails internally for many parts of the system. As much as I love Rails, it's extremely hard to scale an appl

by xiphias2 7y ago

alasdair_ 7y ago
Both Twitter and Groupon scaled to many millions of users using RoR. I don't remember it being especially more difficult than scaling any other kind of system to millions of users.
- edf13 7y ago
  Twitter had massive issues scaling. Their blue bird of death was infamous for it. Groupon wasn’t anywhere near real-time that a trading system requires
outworlder 7y ago
> The reason is quite simple: they are using Ruby on Rails internally for many parts of the system. The choice of a language or framework is only one factor on the success of failure of a system. You can write a broker in brainfuck if you are so inclined. You can make it rock solid. Your pick may require more or less engineering resources, but that's all it does. You mention ActiveRecord. That too is premature optimization. Crafting optimized SQL queries will not save a badly architected app. They might even be worse if whoever is optimizing them doesn't fully understand what they are doing. > if you want to make sure that the databas doesn't lock the tables for a long time. You didn't mention which database you are using. You didn't say anything about its schema. This is yet another generalization. Not all databases will "lock the tables", no matter how badly queries are written. And, if they do, optimize that. Usually, only a handful of services are critical. Microservices are all the rage, optimize those to death.