the combination of erlang backbone + ruby nodes is a wonderful way to write distributed systems. i've put in my time rolling my own when a single-node system ne

the combination of erlang backbone + ruby nodes is a wonderful way to write distributed systems. i've put in my time rolling my own when a single-node system needed to go distributed, and today i'd pay the up-front cost of integrating either erlang or a message queue as soon as i added the second node; these things invariably have to scale up more than you'd expect, and your homegrown system will almost as invariably fall over and die when you can least afford it.