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Message: [QUOTE="Joseph, post: 4526578"] Folks, After the long post regarding Joe's now infamous entry about Ruby, I wondered, what have the really successful, scalable, big, websites / web applications out there have used. So I turned mostly to two sources, which while not perfect, are good enough. For popularity or raw scalability I used Alexa's ranking here: [URL]http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none[/URL] And for webserver I either used Netcraft: [URL]http://news.netcraft.com/[/URL] or actually tried to figure out what the site used by looking at the code or what the page used. This is the list of the top 20 sites and what they are apparently using, these days many of these sites hide what goes on inside, but still we can guess, and yes I have given it my best guess in some cases. Here is the table, feel free to add more information to it since there are still many gaps that I have identified with a question mark. The first line mentions the site name and web server, the second line the language or framework behind it. 1 Yahoo FreeBSD PERL, PHP, Proprietary, C? 2 MSN Windows Server 2000/2003, Some Apache ASP, ASP.NET, DLLs? 3 Google Linux based or unknown servers, probably modified FreeBSD or Apache. Python, Perl, PHP?, C, Proprietary, Java 4 Baidu.com Linux based unknown. ? 5. Qq.com Linux based unknown and Windows 2003. ? 6. MySpace Windows 2003 / 2000 some Linux unknowns too. Coldfusion 7. sina.com.cn FreeBSD, Solaris 8, Linux based unknowns, ? 8. Yahoo Japan Like Yahoo at 1. 9. 163.com China FreeBSD, Linux based unknowns, ? 10 Live.com Windows 2003, Linux unknown servers ASP, ASP.NET, DLLs? 11 eBay.com Windows 2000/2003 PERL?, C?, DLLs, Proprietary, more? 12. Sohu.com China Linux unknown servers ? 13. YouTube.com Linux unknown servers ? 14. Yahoo China Like 1 15. Microsoft Windows 2003 / 2000 ASP.net, ASP, DLLs? 16. Wikipedia FreeBSD, Linux unknown servers PHP, PERL? 17. Amazon.com FreeBSD, Linux unknown servers, Solaris 8, Netware PERL, Proprietary, more? 18. Orkut.com Linux unknown server PHP?, PERL? 19. Blogger FreeBSD, Linux unknown servers PHP?, PERL? 20. Google UK Like Google INTERESTING FACTS * Not a single significant "safe" Java J2EE in the top 20. * Many proprietary variations with FreeBSD or Linux as the only common ground * Some .NET and Windows 2003 are indeed listed * Arguably the biggest web application is MySpace which is based on Coldfusion! Certainly not a "safe" choice by a long shot. CONCLUSIONS * Choosing one Framework or language over another seems to be mostly irrelevant as long as you stick to the underlying technology: FreeBSD, Linux Based server or Windows 2003 which appear consistently in the top web sites again and again. Also although is not mentioned anywhere, Oracle, MS SQL Server and MySQL are high up there in these rankings too. * Java and J2EE is by far absent from this list, this should tell us all something. * .Net is very present on the list, MS obviously is doing something right. The progress Ruby is doing with Windows is encouraging. * Choosing the best tools for the job can give you a big payout. MySpace is Coldfusion based, this is risky, but gives you the ability to write database web applications fast... and it has worked well. I would say the risk was worth it. * Not a single major Ruby or Ruby on Rails app cuts to this list yet, but I see no reason why this would not happen eventually. Food for thought fellows, any input on how would Ruby would ever get there, or who runs what, would be appreciated. Jose L. Hurtado Web Developer Toronto, Canada [/QUOTE]

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