Folks,

After the long post regarding Joe's now infamous entry about Ruby, I
wondered, what have the really successful, scalable, big, websites /
web applications out there have used.

So I turned mostly to two sources, which while not perfect, are good
enough.

For popularity or raw scalability I used Alexa's ranking here:
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none

And for webserver I either used Netcraft:
http://news.netcraft.com/

or actually tried to figure out what the site used by looking at the
code or what the page used.

This is the list of the top 20 sites and what they are apparently
using, these days many of these  sites hide what goes on inside, but
still we can guess, and yes I have given it my best guess in some
cases.

Here is the table, feel free to add more information to it since there
are still many gaps that I have identified with a question mark.  The
first line mentions the site name and web server, the second line the
language or framework behind it.

1 Yahoo	FreeBSD
   PERL, PHP, Proprietary, C?

2 MSN	Windows Server 2000/2003, Some Apache
   ASP, ASP.NET, DLLs?

3 Google Linux based or unknown servers, probably modified FreeBSD or
Apache.
   Python, Perl, PHP?, C, Proprietary, Java

4 Baidu.com  Linux based unknown.
  ?

5. Qq.com  Linux based unknown and Windows 2003.
   ?

6. MySpace  Windows 2003 / 2000 some Linux unknowns too.
   Coldfusion

7. sina.com.cn	FreeBSD, Solaris 8, Linux based unknowns,
    ?

8. Yahoo Japan Like Yahoo at 1.

9. 163.com China  FreeBSD, Linux based unknowns,
    ?

10 Live.com	Windows 2003, Linux unknown servers
   ASP, ASP.NET, DLLs?

11 eBay.com Windows 2000/2003
PERL?, C?, DLLs, Proprietary, more?

12. Sohu.com China	Linux unknown servers
      ?

13. YouTube.com	Linux unknown servers
      ?

14.	Yahoo China	Like 1

15. Microsoft	Windows 2003 / 2000
      ASP.net, ASP, DLLs?

16.   Wikipedia	FreeBSD, Linux unknown servers
	PHP, PERL?

17. Amazon.com	FreeBSD, Linux unknown servers, Solaris 8, Netware
     PERL, Proprietary, more?

18. Orkut.com	Linux unknown server
      PHP?, PERL?

19. Blogger		FreeBSD, Linux unknown servers
      PHP?, PERL?

20.	Google UK	Like Google

INTERESTING FACTS

* Not a single significant "safe" Java J2EE in the top 20.
* Many proprietary variations with FreeBSD or Linux as the only common
ground
* Some .NET and Windows 2003 are indeed listed
* Arguably the biggest web application is MySpace which is based on
Coldfusion! Certainly not a "safe" choice by a long shot.

CONCLUSIONS

* Choosing one Framework or language over another seems to be mostly
irrelevant as long as you stick to the underlying technology:  FreeBSD,
Linux Based server or Windows 2003 which appear consistently in the top
web sites again and again. Also although is not mentioned anywhere,
Oracle, MS SQL Server and MySQL are high up there in these rankings
too.
* Java and J2EE is by far absent from this list, this should tell us
all something.
* .Net is very present on the list, MS obviously is doing something
right.  The progress Ruby is doing with Windows is encouraging.
* Choosing the best tools for the job can give you a big payout.
MySpace is Coldfusion based, this is risky, but gives you the ability
to write database web applications fast... and it has worked well.  I
would say the risk was worth it.
* Not a single major Ruby or Ruby on Rails app cuts to this list yet,
but I see no reason why this would not happen eventually.

Food for thought fellows, any input on how would Ruby would ever get
there, or who runs what, would be appreciated.

Jose L. Hurtado
Web Developer
Toronto, Canada