[devs1010]

If you don't end up needing to scale then your application is most likely a failure, I guess I just don't quite get this approach of "we'll build it as cheaply as possible and then re-work it if needed" because I'm looking at this from the perspective of having worked for companies that did this (before I was working there) and then needing to deal with cleaning up the mess since their hastily built app did end up needing to scale. Web apps, by default, usually have the intention of attracting a wide user base so I can't say I agree with this line of thinking

[rbanffy]

You are suffering from selection bias. You experienced applications that already needed to scale. For every one of those, you have a hundred that never made it. Had they started with harder to develop with technologies, they would have failed without having any completed products.