Simon Willison’s Weblog

Why did Twitter have so many problems if it is made with Ruby?

19th February 2012

My answer to Why did Twitter have so many problems if it is made with Ruby? on Quora

The technical problem Twitter solves (distributing millions of short messages per minute to an enormous graph of follow relationships) is extremely hard in any language.

Posted 19th February 2012 at 2:21 pm · Follow me on Mastodon, Bluesky, Twitter or subscribe to my newsletter

More recent articles

Claude Fable is relentlessly proactive - 11th June 2026
Initial impressions of Claude Fable 5 - 9th June 2026
Running Python code in a sandbox with MicroPython and WASM - 6th June 2026

This is Why did Twitter have so many problems if it is made with Ruby? by Simon Willison, posted on 19th February 2012.

rails 110 ruby 74 twitter 161 quora 1,005

Next: What web programming framework best supports 'drag and drop' actions? Please give examples of sites and/or plug-ins that support the interaction.

Previous: Is it reasonably safe to visit Ethiopia and then to fly from Ethiopia back home via Cairo?

Monthly briefing

Sponsor me for $10/month and get a curated email digest of the month's most important LLM developments.

Pay me to send you less!

Sponsor & subscribe