Rails is great, except when it's not

Or, Rails sucks, except when it's not Rails.

The Rails (and to some extent, Ruby) community liked to jump up and down and point to Twitter as proof that large, busy sites were doable with Rails.

That is, until Twitter showed signs of rampant epic fail. Now the story is that Twitter is not really a Rails site; sure, Rails is used to serve Web pages, but there's lot's of non-Ruby stuff in there too, and that's where the trouble is.

So, which is it? Is Twitter a Rails site? Then own up to the weaknesses. Otherwise, stop parading Twitter as a Rails success story.