5 ms·

I wish Twitter had pulled a HHVM with Ruby on Rails. I really do cause HHVM's benefits for PHP-based code bases looks appealing.

ciupicri 11y ago
Hasn't Twitter switched to Scala?
- draven 11y ago
  They certainly seem to have a lot of infrastructure running on the JVM (both Scala and Java.) There is some information there (with emphasis on Scala, obviously): http://www.typesafe.com/resources/case-studies-and-stories/new-tweets-per-second-record-and-how http://www.typesafe.com/resources/case-studies-and-stories/n...
- VeejayRampay 11y ago
  They have for at least parts of their infrastructure but there was a time where they were heavily invested in Ruby on Rails just like Facebook and PHP. They could have chosen to work on the framework and Ruby itself to make things better, they chose to move on to greener pastures instead. As a Ruby developer I regret that didn't "pull a HHVM", would have made my life easier, just HHVM and the whole FB/HHVM/Hack ecosystem is making PHP devs' life easier.
  - chrisseaton 11y ago
    Are you just after a faster Ruby? We're working on an implementation of Ruby that is often an order of magnitude faster than anything else out there http://www.chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/ http://www.chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/. Or is it the typing and other infrastructure you wanted?
    - VeejayRampay 11y ago
      In the general sense I am absolutely after a faster Ruby. I am also after a Ruby with better tooling, better error handling and all bells and whistles. I'm following your development on Ruby Truffle with a lot of excitement, but like most Ruby / Ruby on Rails developers, the only thing that I wish is that I can just switch the Ruby and have it work exactly the same, except faster/better/stronger. From what I understand JRuby/Truffle is closing the gaps at a nice pace (your recent tweets on constant folding is even showing that you're aiming not only for feature parity but for feature parity AND MOAR and that's awesome), but with existing applications and associated gems and all the implication of having to switch my Ruby to another slightly more exotic one, the thought is currently a source of anguish (because a lot of the existing ecosystem is extremely tied and tailored to MRI for better of for worse). I'm simply waiting for the time where I can just replace a line in my Gemfile and reap the benefits. That being said, I would like to thank you for all the efforts you're putting in this, the blog entries, the Ruby Bibliography and all its promising research on making the Ruby ecosystem better, the benchmarks and overall collaboration with the folks at JRuby and I hope we get to see lots of good things in the future from your end.
      - chrisseaton 11y ago
        Yeah we're going for being indistinguishable from MRI (unless you want to use the extra features). We even have a simple statically linked build that does not require a JVM, so that you're just running a simple binary like in MRI. That coupled with our support for MRI's C extensions is our strategy for MRI compatibility.
    - technion 11y ago
      Are you able to give us an update on the status of Truffle? The page you linked talks about 2014. The JRuby wiki states: Truffle is a research project, there is no expected release date Overall, it's an exciting project, "Ruby is slow" is an overused meme that's caused a lot of issue for me.
      - chrisseaton 11y ago
        We've not blogged in a while but there were papers at PDLI and ICOOOLPS in the last few weeks. Since this time last year we've hired three new people to the project. We're running simple web frameworks like Sinatra and simple database drivers like Redis. Hopefully we'll have a big update at RubyConf.
matthewmacleod 11y ago
I'm not sure that would have been a solution. Twitters problems are architectural, telecoms-scale ones. Rails is unlikely to ever be suited for problems like that, and it feels like any attempt to make it so would neuter some of the benefits it offers elsewhere. On the other hand, PHP is just a language and doesn't enforce architectural style. A much better option for this sort of thing, IMO.
taf2 11y ago
They did do a lot of work towards improving ruby performance remember this post: https://blog.twitter.com/2011/building-faster-ruby-garbage-collector https://blog.twitter.com/2011/building-faster-ruby-garbage-c... I think a big issue was at the time mainstream ruby was 1.8 and upcoming versions 1.9/2 would later replace and create a minor python2/python3 type issue where many later organizations using ruby 1.8 did not upgrade to 1.9/2 not until just recently, causing a kind of stall in patches contributions to what is now 2.2 That said many of the ideas from twitters work and others is now in ruby.
pjmlp 11y ago
Just use Crystal instead.
- VeejayRampay 11y ago
  Thanks a lot for the heads up on Crystal. The language looks close enough to Ruby that I immediately feel home, yet looks slightly different (and somewhat lower-level it seems).
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Check the Poly Conf 2015 presentations (sorry cannot search for the link right now) Lots of Ruby code can even be compiled as is.

ciupicri 11y ago

Hasn't Twitter switched to Scala?

draven 11y ago
They certainly seem to have a lot of infrastructure running on the JVM (both Scala and Java.) There is some information there (with emphasis on Scala, obviously): http://www.typesafe.com/resources/case-studies-and-stories/new-tweets-per-second-record-and-how http://www.typesafe.com/resources/case-studies-and-stories/n...
VeejayRampay 11y ago
They have for at least parts of their infrastructure but there was a time where they were heavily invested in Ruby on Rails just like Facebook and PHP. They could have chosen to work on the framework and Ruby itself to make things better, they chose to move on to greener pastures instead. As a Ruby developer I regret that didn't "pull a HHVM", would have made my life easier, just HHVM and the whole FB/HHVM/Hack ecosystem is making PHP devs' life easier.
- chrisseaton 11y ago
  Are you just after a faster Ruby? We're working on an implementation of Ruby that is often an order of magnitude faster than anything else out there http://www.chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/ http://www.chrisseaton.com/rubytruffle/. Or is it the typing and other infrastructure you wanted?
  - VeejayRampay 11y ago
    In the general sense I am absolutely after a faster Ruby. I am also after a Ruby with better tooling, better error handling and all bells and whistles. I'm following your development on Ruby Truffle with a lot of excitement, but like most Ruby / Ruby on Rails developers, the only thing that I wish is that I can just switch the Ruby and have it work exactly the same, except faster/better/stronger. From what I understand JRuby/Truffle is closing the gaps at a nice pace (your recent tweets on constant folding is even showing that you're aiming not only for feature parity but for feature parity AND MOAR and that's awesome), but with existing applications and associated gems and all the implication of having to switch my Ruby to another slightly more exotic one, the thought is currently a source of anguish (because a lot of the existing ecosystem is extremely tied and tailored to MRI for better of for worse). I'm simply waiting for the time where I can just replace a line in my Gemfile and reap the benefits. That being said, I would like to thank you for all the efforts you're putting in this, the blog entries, the Ruby Bibliography and all its promising research on making the Ruby ecosystem better, the benchmarks and overall collaboration with the folks at JRuby and I hope we get to see lots of good things in the future from your end.
    - chrisseaton 11y ago
      Yeah we're going for being indistinguishable from MRI (unless you want to use the extra features). We even have a simple statically linked build that does not require a JVM, so that you're just running a simple binary like in MRI. That coupled with our support for MRI's C extensions is our strategy for MRI compatibility.
  - technion 11y ago
    Are you able to give us an update on the status of Truffle? The page you linked talks about 2014. The JRuby wiki states: Truffle is a research project, there is no expected release date Overall, it's an exciting project, "Ruby is slow" is an overused meme that's caused a lot of issue for me.
    - chrisseaton 11y ago
      We've not blogged in a while but there were papers at PDLI and ICOOOLPS in the last few weeks. Since this time last year we've hired three new people to the project. We're running simple web frameworks like Sinatra and simple database drivers like Redis. Hopefully we'll have a big update at RubyConf.

matthewmacleod 11y ago

I'm not sure that would have been a solution. Twitters problems are architectural, telecoms-scale ones. Rails is unlikely to ever be suited for problems like that, and it feels like any attempt to make it so would neuter some of the benefits it offers elsewhere. On the other hand, PHP is just a language and doesn't enforce architectural style. A much better option for this sort of thing, IMO.

taf2 11y ago

They did do a lot of work towards improving ruby performance remember this post: https://blog.twitter.com/2011/building-faster-ruby-garbage-collector https://blog.twitter.com/2011/building-faster-ruby-garbage-c... I think a big issue was at the time mainstream ruby was 1.8 and upcoming versions 1.9/2 would later replace and create a minor python2/python3 type issue where many later organizations using ruby 1.8 did not upgrade to 1.9/2 not until just recently, causing a kind of stall in patches contributions to what is now 2.2 That said many of the ideas from twitters work and others is now in ruby.

pjmlp 11y ago

Just use Crystal instead.

VeejayRampay 11y ago
Thanks a lot for the heads up on Crystal. The language looks close enough to Ruby that I immediately feel home, yet looks slightly different (and somewhat lower-level it seems).
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Check the Poly Conf 2015 presentations (sorry cannot search for the link right now) Lots of Ruby code can even be compiled as is.