As Ruby on Rails devotees converge upon RailsConf 2008 (and the simultaneously held un-conference CabooseConf), performance startup FiveRuns is launching TuneUp, a “social” debugging tool for Rails applications.
The TuneUp plugin tells you specifically where a RoR app is running slowly. If you’ve coded a few ridiculously inefficient database queries, it’ll point out just which ones.
But debugging is not always so simple, so TuneUp does something sorely needed in a world dominated by Google searches for programming answers. A reporting mechanism sends your reports to TuneUp’s site for review by others. Each report, or “run”, contains your complete Rails configuration, the entire execution path of a request, and the overall execution time. When you publish these runs, other programmers and team members can diagnose your problems and offer potential fixes.
TuneUp has the potential to get rid of long posts on Ruby forums detailing programmers’ configurations, exact SQL queries, etc. Over time (if FiveRuns structures it correctly), TuneUp may form a great pool of knowledge with common programming issues and bugs - and their answers.
FiveRuns belongs in the quickly growing category of Rails applications supporting other Rails applications. New Relic, Heroku, and Engine Yard are others in the category that have recently raised big venture rounds. FiveRuns itself has raised $9 million total from Austin Ventures.
See the video below for a screencast of TuneUp.
FYI the gem installation is still down; they are most likely partying in Portland.
On a separate note, I wonder if this is what Jeff Atwood and Joel Spolsky have in mind with StackOverflow.
who’s this henry work feller?
The other solution, of course, is to go with a language that’s actually robust, like PHP, instead of relying on other people to help you with problems you shouldn’t be having.
Who wants to throw in to buy a license for twitter?
Ross
-http://www.hostdisciple.com
@Josh
for reference, look how bad PHP, ruby, and python all rank in terms of performance (as in, none of them are “robust”):
http://shootout.alioth.debian......p;lang=all
and you can have performance problems in any language if you’re doing something stupid, or running a slow Db query. the language used doesn’t magically prevent that.
but i’m not seeing what this new tool gives you that you can’t just get from your log file - the visual cues seems to be the only thing - i’d rather just run rawk.rb on my production logs to see which optimizations will yield the most benefit.
@Henry, I believe StackOverflow is taking the more generic approach (as in not just catering to Ruby programmers).
Khang
Interesting, good information. I think this could be useful.
@khang I think you’re right
Ryan
lessons in brevity: http://www.mofata.com
I wonder whether they’ll also do it for PHP/Java - it could be a (potentially) good tool for comparing languages (in terms of performance). Also I still thing there’s a lot more done in PHP or Java than Ruby - regardless of it’s hype.
@Marcin I kind of doubt these are the guys to use this approach with other languages — they seem like pretty hardcore “Rubyists.” Also, I think it’s important to note that yes, Ruby/Rails does have a lot of hype. I think it lives up to it in a lot of ways, but I’m totally with you in the sense of owning the news cycle.
One thing the article doesn’t mention is TuneUp is FREE. No need to buy a license for Twitter.
Just a quick note - I’m the author of El Dorado (the app they use in the demo). If you’re interested in social sites and Rails, make sure to check it out. Clearly, there’s room for optimization, and I’m always looking for contributors!
El Dorado is a full-stack community web application written in Ruby/Rails. It features a forum, event calendar, group chat, file sharing, random headers, avatars, themes, timezone support, and privacy settings.
Homepage: http://almosteffortless.com/eldorado
Demo and support site: http://eldorado.almosteffortless.com
Open source git repository: http://github.com/trevorturk/el-dorado/tree/master
The Ruby vs. PHP vs. whatever discussions are tiering. Use what fits your bill and be aware of your choices strength and weaknesses and the consequences thereof.