S.C.A.L.E.

Performance is fairly concrete to measure, mostly as part of click responsiveness. https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/rail They can also measure it live in the website, the median response time of API calls and so on. Github has said this: "We’re quite obsessed with performance. We want to make sure the site is always performant and continually fast. For a Rails app, github.com is a really, really quick site and we have a motto that “It’s not shipped until it’s fast.”" https://medium.com/s-c-a-l-e/github-scaling-on-ruby-with-a-nomadic-tec… They can create a performance measurement team, assign tickets based on what they find and prioritize them as part of ticket management. If something is too slow, then maybe it's time to refactor the underlying architecture or subsystem thats making things slow.

Almost as hilarious as your strawman argument. Palantir was started with the explicit mission of aiding the surveillance-industrial complex. Mongo Inc was started with explicit mission of selling cloud databases(PaaS) to the general public. Source: http://fortune.com/2014/09/04/peter-thiels-contrarian-strategy/ “Basically,” Thiel explains, “I thought that some of the approaches that PayPal had used to fight fraud”—which at one point posed an existential threat to PayPal—“could be extended into other contexts, like fighting terrorism.” For contrast: Mongo Inc's Eliot Horowitz: https://medium.com/s-c-a-l-e/mongodb-co-creator-explains-why-nosql-cam…

I really want to build a team someday like this. https://medium.com/s-c-a-l-e/github-scaling-on-ruby-with-a-nomadic-tec… or Shopify. I think it's possible on a Ruby or Python stack. Yes Ruby was a flavor of the month but now its not. I feel like if I hire a Ruby guy/girl now, they might have done it for a while or at least they don't seem to chase technologies. If I built a product on Node, or Go I just feel like that person would be gone in a year when the next thing comes out. I'm sure it happens on the Ruby/Python side but I think probably less.

I'd say that non-sql databases did indeed explode in popularity, so this does get the nod. However, I think the prediction may have gone a little too far. Have they surpassed relational databases? I'm getting the impression that a lot of people are reconsidering the "nosql" approach, as well, sticking with (or reverting to) sql databases, including simple ol' mysql. This was an interesting interview that showed up on HN a few days ago. https://medium.com/s-c-a-l-e/github-scaling-on-ruby-with-a-nomadic-tec… I was never all that enthusiastic about "nosql", partly because personality wise, I tend to be reluctant about new technologies, and I liked a system based on relational algebra, all that. That said, "nosql" wasn't really meant as a NO to sql. I get the feeling that the term got away from them a bit, largely because "you-know-sometimes-there-really-are-better-solutions-than-sql-for-some-problems-and-you-might-want-to-consider-them" isn't really an option as a catch phrase. That said, nosql absolutely did grow massively in popularity, it did move from the fringes to mainstream use, so as a prediction, yeah, I'd agree this should score a few points.