I decided to create a big social network application with Ruby on Rails. How many visitors can Rails take? Did I make a true choice or not?
+8
A:
This is not really an answerable question. Rails can take as many visitors as you throw at it, provided you have the right infrastructure set up. Given that your app is apparently not even finished yet, I think Rails is perfectly capable of handling your current load and probably as many visitors as you'll get for the foreseeable future. If you find that you outgrow Rails' ability to serve your users on your current hardware, celebrate your success by buying more.
Chuck
2010-01-10 09:11:43
+3
A:
It will always be slower than a language that gets compiled before running, because Ruby is interpreted run-time. But for what Ruby is offering it is quite fast compared to other interpreted languages.
Ruby on Rails is offering several extra advantages like (partial) page caching, so for a high traffic site this might be ideal if implemented correctly.
To give an exact number of visitors is impossible, it depends on the available functionalities, the amount of pages each visitor is accessing, your hardware, your database and of course your programming skills...
Veger
2010-01-10 09:27:24
Ruby 1.9 compiles to YARV bytecode but then that bytecode is indeed interpreted, however both JRuby and Rubinius partly compiles Ruby to machine code.
Jonas Elfström
2010-01-10 10:01:18