> Ironically, the performance issue becomes less articulated in this non-http, non-rails context, yet in these cases people generally dismiss ruby as option, for its performance-issues. Which, catch-22, is one of the reasons Ruby is hardly used outside of Rails (and/or Web).
It's a shame that most people only write Ruby in the context of Rails. It's a lovely language, and performant enough for a wide array of tasks. It can be startlingly elegant and exceedingly productive.
Of course, it's valid to talk about Ruby performance in the context of Rails, as the author does. However, it's gratifying to see a more detailed discussion on what Ruby folks mean when they say "your database is usually the bottleneck," and the author does a good job at examining different aspects.
(All that said: Rails is still a really good choice. So much of our work is just writing CRUD apps, and it's kinda boring. Rails makes it boring and easy, and it's a really good tradeoff.)