[melvin]

I was seeking to avoid the same thing recently. Instead of adding more JavaScript, I decided to use PHP. While we're using Rails, it's very inefficient to fire up the whole engine to do something as simple as outputting a script with a few interpolated variables. A simple PHP script can put out 2-3 times as many requests per second as Rails/Django for a task like that.

[patio11]

Rack Metal was pretty much made for that. I wouldn't use either until I had evidence that it was a bottleneck, but if you do, then it would let you do a few simple requests quickly without needing to swap stacks. (I run PHP and Rails concurrently for one application, but only because I had to be able to get Wordpress working.)