There has been a lot written lately about Twitter’s reliability problems. Let me say now that I know nothing more than what is in the public domain. Therefore this post is not specifically about what may or may not be the problem at Twitter but the reasons that have been debated on various blogs and websites.

The two most popular reasons speculated over are that the problems stem from either the Rails platform or the developers involved. Having been involved with Rails projects as an agency we can appreciate many of the issues raised both with the technology and the community around it. There are well known sites running happily on RoR and so I’m not going to say that Rails guarantees problems. From what I have read I think the reasons suggested behind Twitter’s problems reflect wider issues.

We recently attended a meeting in which a prospective start-up rejected our standard proposal to carry out a requirements gathering phase and create a tech spec in favour of the “Just start coding” approach. There is a propensity among start-ups to take this approach and indeed some of the reasons mooted behind Twitter’s problems with regards to scaling suggest a lack of forward planning in the code and architecture. New frameworks such as Rails are hailed for their ability to develop fast and encourage developers to possibly start building a little too soon.

I know that Web 2.0 is very much about the latest and greatest and getting to market fast is important, as is using new technologies and approaches such as the popular iterative methodology. However I think it is also important to make use of old fashioned, tried and tested methods that include good forward planning and choosing technologies based on traditional principles such as reliability and scalability rather than what’s cool in the moment.

The objective of most start-ups is to grow as fast as possible and cultivate a large user base. This combined with intensive functionality such as AJAX and large scale file management means the that early choices in platform, database structure, system architecture and so on are vital in guaranteeing that your own success is not your downfall.

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