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I agree entirely about that tech debt. I've built, sold, grew and failed several startups myself. Many with Rails at the center. I've been building with Rails for way over a decade, so I'm well aware of the "options" back in the day. What I'm arguing, however, isn't to take on debt¹, I'm saying that productivity and performance aren't always opposites. Sure, Rails trades in performance for productivity. But, I've learned, this is mostly just Rails. There are many languages and frameworks that are just as productive (for a certain definition, see previous comment) as Rails, but also performant. And I'm arguing that performance affects productivity: a performant, scalable software is easier to work on, because it gives faster feedback (tests, ci, manual testing), wastes less time waiting for stuff (hundreds of single seconds add up over days and weeks weeks), and decreases friction (I'll postpone running the full test suite if I know it'll hog my machine for the next half hour. I'll gladly run it, if it takes a few minutes or less). Edit: and, if what you say about tech debt is true (I think it is), wouldn't Shopify be at a position now to pay it back? Many startups that used Rails paid it back by migrating elsewhere. So maybe Rails in its entirety is Tech Debt? ¹A cautionary sidenote, that I've learned the hard way, is that taking on tech debt is an art in itself. Not all debt is alike. Many kinds will cripple my project. Where at the unlikely moment that I do need to scale, that's impossible. Or when I do need to pivot for the umpteenth time, we cannot, without that Giant Refactoring. |