Comments on: Twitter off the Rails? And, so what?

By: Phil Crissman

Phil Crissman — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:29:32 +0000

@dhh, exactly. It would seem to me to defeat the whole purpose if you were using a “custom” version. Especially all the handy features that come from rails being distributed as a gem, and being able to automatically update it, etc, etc. Running a unique fork would invalidate a lot of benefits.

Thanks for stopping by!

By: DHH

DHH — Sat, 03 May 2008 14:13:38 +0000

We certainly don’t run a special version of Rails at 37signals. That wouldn’t make any sense. The whole point of open-sourcing Rails was to participate in the shared commons. Running our own fork isn’t very compatible or sensible for that.

By: Jared

Jared — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:05:46 +0000

100% agreed on all fronts. A lot of people who use Twitter are the programmers or the server admins. In other words, they’re the people who _would_ care about Twitter abandoning Ruby on Rails. The average Twitter user doesn’t care if the site runs on Joe’s Programming Language of the Week as long as it works. People aren’t going to leave Twitter just because they switch platforms. If McDonalds starts using one brand of fryers over another, do people care? No. As long as the fries still taste the same, it doesn’t matter.

By: Phil Crissman

Phil Crissman — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:37:24 +0000

That’s a good point, but…

My understanding is that 37Signals is currently running most apps off Rails Edge, which anyone else could do also; see David’s tweet about this.

I think it would defeat the whole purpose of some of the benefits of using Rails if they were using a “different” version. Now, their servers and perhaps many plugins may well be finely tuned and customized, but their version of Rails itself is certainly the same as you or I could use.

Obviously I can’t “know” that, but that is what David said, and I can’t imagine any possible benefit to changing only their version, and not Rails Edge (the development version) itself.

By: Piers

Piers — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:19:49 +0000

Since the guys from 37Signals were the ones to develop RoR, I wouldn’t be surprised if the version they use is slightly (if not quite) different from the “public” version, so I don’t think they’re a good comparison.