Powerset to Launch on Ruby; Ruby Scales!
Kevin Clark revels that Powerset - a "natural language" based search engine, seen by some as a future "Google killer" - is going to launch with a Ruby powered front end. In itself, this isn't particularly amazing, although if Powerset realizes its Google-killing goals, having a major search engine powered by Ruby will be kudos indeed.
Of more interest is that Powerset is using a mixture of Rails, Merb, and Camping apps throughout the company, and that Powerset is "not worried about scaling." Clark quotes Blaine Cook of Twitter:
Rails and Ruby haven’t been stumbling blocks, compared to any other language or framework. The performance boosts associated with a “faster” language would give us a 10-20% improvement, but thanks to architectural changes that Ruby and Rails happily accommodated, Twitter is 10000% faster than it was in January.
Clark then looks at what all of this means for the Ruby community.. and for that, you need to go check out his post.
June 22, 2007 at 7:58 pm
[:weasel_words:] _Who_ sees Powerset as a future "Google killer"?
Weasel words are what people who don't have sources use in order to make their opinions seem more valid. Please don't use them or quote them; they make you look terrible.
June 22, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Okay, point taken! :) I personally don't think Powerset is a Google killer, hence the quotation marks. It's not my opinion, but something I've seen said in a lot of places. The easiest source, ironically.. http://www.google.com/search?q=%22google+killer%22+powerset
June 23, 2007 at 1:39 am
They're not worried about scaling because they don't have to be at this point in time.