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Twitter On Scala

Posted by kdawson on from the going-off-the-rails dept.

machaut writes "Twitter, one of the highest profile Ruby on Rails-backed websites on the Internet, has in the past year started replacing some of their Ruby infrastructure with an emerging language called Scala, developed by Martin Odersky at Switzerland's École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Although they still prefer Ruby on Rails for user-facing web applications, Twitter's developers have started replacing Ruby daemon servers with Scala alternatives, and plan eventually to serve API requests, which comprise the majority of their traffic, with Scala instead of Ruby. This week several articles have appeared that discuss this shift at Twitter. A technical interview with three Twitter developers was published on Artima. One of those developers, Alex Payne, Twitter's API lead, gave a talk on this subject at the Web 2.0 Expo this week, which was covered by Technology Review and The Register."

11 of 324 comments (clear)

  1. Stupid by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Funny

    They should have just used Java. Wait--

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. Good thinking, by geekoid · · Score: 3, Funny

    replace one language that wasn't tested on that scale and replace it with another one that wasn't tested on that scale.

    Good thinking~

    Oh look, twitter is down..again.

    --
    The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  3. Scala? Not for me! by bogaboga · · Score: 2, Funny

    Scala is not for me I can confidently say. I am too old to learn a new [programming] language. The languages I know will suffice for now.

    There is a saying too: "You cannot teach old dogs new tricks."

    1. Re:Scala? Not for me! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      You know, at first I thought this post was off-topic, because it's an incredibly pointless life update that none of us could possibly care about.

      Then I realized that the story is about Twitter, and suddenly I think it's the most relevant post so far.

  4. Aw, Java and Python had a baby! by gpig · · Score: 5, Funny

    Isn't she cute :)

  5. Mod down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    OP is just a twitter sock puppet.

  6. Re:Who gives a shit about twitter? by FredFredrickson · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wow I just realized what an angry old man I must sound like there. I didn't mean to be that harsh. I'm just don't like twitter, and spending time speaking about its technical *wonders* seems to be a waste of time, since I assume it's about 3 lines of code (Or should be), and mimics most highschool coding class students' first projects.

    Wow, there I go again. So angry. I just quit caffeine, you must understand!

    --
    Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
  7. Re:Should have used PHP. by iluvcapra · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well, it wasn't stable enough for twitter :D

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    Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
  8. Psht. by kkrajewski · · Score: 5, Funny

    I program in PDP-11 assembly, which is then translated into C, compiled into Java bytecode, and executed on a JVM. I call it Assemblacava, and it's the wave of the future.

  9. Re:Should have used PHP. by Achromatic1978 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'd flame on, but I'm trying to compose myself after the fits of laughter that the phrase "lifestream transactions" brought on. Seriously?

  10. Twitter should have used Perl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Every scripting language tries to do what Perl does. None of them have CPAN.

    I've tried repeatedly to use Ruby and RoR. For trivial projects, they are fine. Scalability may come, but Ruby GEMS needs to be rewritten in Perl to remove the HUGE memory footprint to maintain your GEMS. You all know what I mean.

    Yep, perl is what Twitter needs.