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(first, I am biased as I have worked with Ruby since 2007 and still enjoying it) This is not a reply to you, but I decided a long time ago that I will not let

by gls2ro 3y ago

(first, I am biased as I have worked with Ruby since 2007 and still enjoying it) This is not a reply to you, but I decided a long time ago that I will not let this argument about scalability remain with response. If you have already decided not to try Ruby on Rails or any Ruby framework, say so. It is ok to have different preferences. But this thing with Ruby needs to be more scalable is a very weak argument. Here is why: In the tech industry, it is not uncommon to come across companies that opt to rewrite their tech stack in a different language, often citing scalability as a reason. While this argument holds some merit, it's worth noting that scalability is a complex issue that affects all web frameworks, not just Ruby on Rails. Therefore, criticizing Ruby on Rails solely based on scalability may not be a strong argument when you take into consideration the idea that there are very big companies build with it. - Ruby on Rails is scalable for 99.999% of all startups created with it. This 99.999% will die for any other reason but not because of their tech stack. Again the same can be said about any other web framework. Of course the 99.999% is just a made up number based on the fact that there are so few companies failing because of their tech stack scalability. - Twitter and Github are maybe in the top 0.0001% of web apps when thinking about scale or usage. Hope you (the reader of this comment) will create a startup that will be so successful in terms of scale. But the chances are that with 99.999% confidence, you are not them, and the chances to create a product that will be like them are slim. - The problems at scale are not only technological but also organizational. Now open this list https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies and this list https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/public https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/public and try to check how many of them are using Ruby. There are quite a few in this top. It scales or else there should not be any big company using Ruby there.

tredre3 3y ago
> Ruby on Rails is scalable for 99.999% of all startups created with it. You are right of course, but not for your stated reasons. Essentially RoR doesn't scale. RoR scalability is a meme, anything else scales much better. From node to PHP, they all can do much more on much less hardware. To achieve hyperscale with RoR you have to throw absurd hardware with layers upon layers of load balancers in front of it. But I'd argue that it doesn't matter at all for a startup. Like you said most won't ever reach the point where they need such a thing. But they all benefit quite dearly from the excellent developer velocity provided by RoR.
- zamalek 3y ago
  Right, but I do believe that it is important to choose something that scales competently: > most won't ever reach the point where they need such a thing I considered covering this argument in my gp comment. What if your startup does grow to the scale where it becomes an issue? Do you suspend new user signups until you can do the rewrite? Or do you just let things keep spiraling, like GitHub? Because by choosing RoR you are making an assertion up front: our startup will never scale beyond X users (because you're never going to get buy-in for a rewrite).
  - gls2ro 3y ago
    I agree about making an informed choice. I disagree with: > Because by choosing RoR you are making an assertion up front: our startup will never scale beyond X users (because you're never going to get buy-in for a rewrite). How can this be true when we know that Shopify, Gitlab, Github and all others are using RoR. Here is a more concrete scale[1]: > We served 75.98 Million requests per minute to our commerce platform at peak. That’s 1.27 Million requests per second! Is that a bit enough limit for you? Here is more: > We achieved 99.999+% uptime while averaging 3 Terabytes per minute of egress traffic across our infrastructure [2] [1] https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983926126977024 https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983926126977024 [2] https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983918900510720 https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983918900510720
    - kirso 3y ago
      The assertion that the startup will achieve this scale is the main pitfall here imo, the chance is less than 0.01%. By the time you reach this problem, you'll have an army of developers to take care of this.
- bigtunacan 3y ago
  I'm sorry, but if your answer is that Node and PHP are inherently more scalable than RoR then you've lost me already. I've worked for three successful startups that started on PHP that couldn't scale the PHP code bases with their customer growth. All three rebuilt on Rails and are still in business and on Rails today. Another startup where I'm very close with the founders they are on Node and they say the system is "a complete dumpster fire". They wish they had built on anything else. The company I'm with now is primarily a giant Rails monolith and we have 100s of thousands of users connected at any given time. Our biggest bottleneck isn't Rails it's Postgres. We are dealing with billions of rows and Postgres isn't really even the problem. The problem is our data model wasn't designed in a way that would allow sharding/partitioning. Even this isn't an intractable problem. We create updated schemas, migrate, backfill. What we don't need to do is leave Rails "because it doesn't scale". Most companies that moved off of Rails because of scalability either don't actually understand scalability or it was 15 years ago and they were on Rails 2 when it was still immature.

by gls2ro 3y ago

tredre3 3y ago

> Ruby on Rails is scalable for 99.999% of all startups created with it. You are right of course, but not for your stated reasons. Essentially RoR doesn't scale. RoR scalability is a meme, anything else scales much better. From node to PHP, they all can do much more on much less hardware. To achieve hyperscale with RoR you have to throw absurd hardware with layers upon layers of load balancers in front of it. But I'd argue that it doesn't matter at all for a startup. Like you said most won't ever reach the point where they need such a thing. But they all benefit quite dearly from the excellent developer velocity provided by RoR.

zamalek 3y ago
Right, but I do believe that it is important to choose something that scales competently: > most won't ever reach the point where they need such a thing I considered covering this argument in my gp comment. What if your startup does grow to the scale where it becomes an issue? Do you suspend new user signups until you can do the rewrite? Or do you just let things keep spiraling, like GitHub? Because by choosing RoR you are making an assertion up front: our startup will never scale beyond X users (because you're never going to get buy-in for a rewrite).
- gls2ro 3y ago
  I agree about making an informed choice. I disagree with: > Because by choosing RoR you are making an assertion up front: our startup will never scale beyond X users (because you're never going to get buy-in for a rewrite). How can this be true when we know that Shopify, Gitlab, Github and all others are using RoR. Here is a more concrete scale[1]: > We served 75.98 Million requests per minute to our commerce platform at peak. That’s 1.27 Million requests per second! Is that a bit enough limit for you? Here is more: > We achieved 99.999+% uptime while averaging 3 Terabytes per minute of egress traffic across our infrastructure [2] [1] https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983926126977024 https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983926126977024 [2] https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983918900510720 https://twitter.com/shopifyeng/status/1597983918900510720
  - kirso 3y ago
    The assertion that the startup will achieve this scale is the main pitfall here imo, the chance is less than 0.01%. By the time you reach this problem, you'll have an army of developers to take care of this.
bigtunacan 3y ago
I'm sorry, but if your answer is that Node and PHP are inherently more scalable than RoR then you've lost me already. I've worked for three successful startups that started on PHP that couldn't scale the PHP code bases with their customer growth. All three rebuilt on Rails and are still in business and on Rails today. Another startup where I'm very close with the founders they are on Node and they say the system is "a complete dumpster fire". They wish they had built on anything else. The company I'm with now is primarily a giant Rails monolith and we have 100s of thousands of users connected at any given time. Our biggest bottleneck isn't Rails it's Postgres. We are dealing with billions of rows and Postgres isn't really even the problem. The problem is our data model wasn't designed in a way that would allow sharding/partitioning. Even this isn't an intractable problem. We create updated schemas, migrate, backfill. What we don't need to do is leave Rails "because it doesn't scale". Most companies that moved off of Rails because of scalability either don't actually understand scalability or it was 15 years ago and they were on Rails 2 when it was still immature.