M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Francis Cianfrocca wrote:
>> Bottom line: using Ruby will always be characterized by a tradeoff 
>> between
>> performance and programmer productivity. This is not a criticism of 
>> Ruby in
>> any way, shape or form! Productivity is a fundamental engineering 
>> value, and
>> time-to-market is a fundamental quality dimension. Ruby therefore has, 
>> and
>> will continue to have, a unique value proposition.
> 
> I'm not sure this is a valid tradeoff. The economics of *development* 
> and the economics of *operating* a large code are two entirely different 
> subjects. People have "always" prototyped in "slow but productive" 
> languages, like Lisp, Perl, PHP and Ruby, and then reached a point where 
> the economics dictated a complete rewrite for speed into C, C++ or Java. 
> I can think of more examples of this than I can of something that was 
> developed and prototyped rapidly and then grew by "just throwing more 
> hardware at inefficient software."
> 
> So ... just like a startup should plan for the day when a big company 
> offers them the choice of selling out or being crushed like a bug, when 
> you implement a great idea in some rapid prototyping framework like 
> Rails, plan for the day when you are offered the choice of rewriting 
> completely in a compiled language or going bankrupt buying hardware.
> 
> 

OK ... so ... is Twitter in trouble?

http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/09/27/twitterIsTakingAShowerToni.html

"I have seen the future, and it's just like the present, only longer." 
-- Kehlog Albran