I agree completely on the GH slow down / fail whale type of problems.
I use GH for about 12 hours a day almost every day, between open source and client projects. I face slow downs in the issue tracker, the git repos themselves (I only use command line), and the web interface to browse a project (code, history, pull requests). I notice a slow down about once a day. Some features, like the contributors graph, are always dead slow. About 10-20% of PR merge attempts fail, and I have to click the button again, sometimes multiple times. I see the Unicorn fail page or some Octocat fail page often enough.
It makes me think exactly of what you describe, a combination of Rails perf / scalability and perhaps a lack of strong backend engineering, I'm not sure.
Right now the problems are in the level of a mild annoyance / surprise that a company like GH has these issues. If it gets worse, I would consider moving away. But because I truly love the UI and overall functionality, it's a positive tradeoff for us at the moment.
You're very welcome regarding the YouTrack suggestion.
Yep, we are seeing exactly the same things and have more or less the same response. I've long been a huge Github fan so to think of moving away makes me quite sad, but the frequent chunkiness (even exhibited in things as simple as switching between page 1 and 2 of open issues) causes me a lot of frustration every day. I'm not ready to give up just yet however.
I use GH for about 12 hours a day almost every day, between open source and client projects. I face slow downs in the issue tracker, the git repos themselves (I only use command line), and the web interface to browse a project (code, history, pull requests). I notice a slow down about once a day. Some features, like the contributors graph, are always dead slow. About 10-20% of PR merge attempts fail, and I have to click the button again, sometimes multiple times. I see the Unicorn fail page or some Octocat fail page often enough.
It makes me think exactly of what you describe, a combination of Rails perf / scalability and perhaps a lack of strong backend engineering, I'm not sure.
Right now the problems are in the level of a mild annoyance / surprise that a company like GH has these issues. If it gets worse, I would consider moving away. But because I truly love the UI and overall functionality, it's a positive tradeoff for us at the moment.
You're very welcome regarding the YouTrack suggestion.