It depends whether you want to know what it means theoretically or literally.
Theoretically, it's usually used in the context of performance / the notion isn't particular well suited for large sites. Literally, it usually means the person is talking out of their ass (there are exceptions, but the majority of claims are people talking out of their ass) - You have to put in time and effort to scale as you work in other situations. A lot of the arguments are carry overs from the "old days" of ruby where deployment was fickle (more fickle?) e.g. you had limited choice of app servers and even then it still seems to have worked well for companies like 37signals and it's kin. Of course, saying that, Mark has a good point - it isn't suited for everything (although I think that's not an argument for it 'not scaling' - more so, it's an argument that you need the right tool - e.g. something that handles itself in a situation with high concurrency for real time chat style stuff. On 20 August 2010 09:13, Mark Wotton <[email protected]> wrote: > On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 11:06 AM, Joshua Partogi <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > I often hear people say that rails is not scalable. What does it mean > > by that exactly? > > > > Does it mean that: > > 1. Rails can not be clustered? > > 2. Rails can not handle many concurrent users? > > 3. The code gets messy when the apps gets larger? > > 4. The performance is not fast? > > > > I am still confused by these buzzword that I often hear in many > > forums. So what are they actually referring when they say rails is not > > scalable? > > There are a few application domains where Rails isn't really > appropriate, like chat servers where clients hold connections open > over a long time. If you look at those systems, obviously something > like Node.js is going to have a large advantage. > > and yes, Ruby is pretty slow as interpreters go, but if you're > building a website that's going to get high load and you're not > already thinking about caching, you're pretty much screwed anyway. In > that use case, Rails is just a convenient way of populating the cache. > > mark > > > -- > A UNIX signature isn't a return address, it's the ASCII equivalent of a > black velvet clown painting. It's a rectangle of carets surrounding a > quote from a literary giant of weeniedom like Heinlein or Dr. Who. > -- Chris Maeda > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<rails-oceania%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > > -- Darcy Laycock Web Developer Perth, Western Australia Mobile: 0433 182 229 Email: [email protected] Web: http://sutto.net/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
