&gt; it&#x27;s about the details of when it fails, how it fails, and whether you can fix it incrementally or if you&#x27;re signing up for a rewrite-while-hair-on-fire.<p>So the important questions are:<p>1. Does Rails performance degrade gracefully under load?<p>2. Can you gradually shift away from a quick-and-dirty Rails-based implementation to something more scalable without the dreaded &quot;rewrite-while-hair-on-fire&quot; scenario?<p>In my experience, the answer to both of these is &#x27;no&#x27;.<p>(But these challenges are hardly unique to Rails.)