That's interesting. I remember having to defend my using ruby to other programmers around that time. I always loved it, and all the hate seemed to be centered around "it's too slow". No one ever brought up twitter being down, explicitly, that I can recall. Perhaps that's what they had in the back of their mind though? It's been a bit of a mystery to me why people passionately hate on ruby and IMO dismiss it out of hand. It's so nice to program with.