Thin

I had the opportunity to use Thin over the weekend.

Thin is a Ruby web server that glues together 3 of the best Ruby libraries in web history:

• the Mongrel parser, the root of Mongrel speed and security
• Event Machine, a network I/O library with extremely high scalability, performance and stability
• Rack, a minimal interface between webservers and Ruby frameworks

Which makes it, with all humility, the most secure, stable, fast and extensible Ruby web server bundled in an easy to use gem for your own pleasure.

Or more simply the description on the Google Groups page.

Thin is the fastest Ruby web server ever built.

I ran it against some of the half-assed apps on my local machine. I've gotten used to seeing things load .. well not slow but not so zippy, either. Chalk it up to a dev environment and move on.

Except that using Thin these apps are very very quick. Greased lightening quick.

We'll see if this holds true if (when) I move any of this to a 'real' web server. Still, I am impressed.