I think that's the way to look at it. You have to remember that Twitter is at a completely different level of traffic than your company will likely ever hit, even if it becomes hugely and wildly popular.
It's like looking at Google's server farm and saying "I can't be successful unless I too have a server farm like Google's."
This article is not about Twitter ditching Rails, because Twitter is not ditching Rails.
This seems worth repeating [1] because this is the top-voted comment, even though the submission title no longer implies that.
Absolutely go with Rails [2], because it's a great way to get started quickly and large successful startups like Twitter are still using it at scale.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2424393 [2] Or Django, or whatever
To clarify, Twitter hasn't and doesn't make boatloads of money.
Boatloads of $???
Re:Twitter Search is Now 3x Faster
by RobertKohr on Monday April 11, 2011 @02:48PM
(#2433785)
AKA: Investors giving them money for worthless pieces of paper.
The implication of Option B is that Rails isn't robust. A lot of people are going to avoid Rails because of that.
Re:Twitter Search is Now 3x Faster
by michaelcampbell on Friday April 08, 2011 @01:14PM
(#2424706)
That could very well be true in some abstract sense; but who among us honestly needs the robustness and/or scalability of Twitter, really?
I go with Option B. If you're a new startup -- don't confuse this advice and start brewing your own Java-based server just because Twitter is doing this now.