This one really surprised me: "Finally, there's not much for deployment. I run my apps in GNU screen and that's about it." Seriously? Is he that lucky, serves that little traffic, or does he run with redundant power, network, server and 24/7 monitoring in an inaccessible bunker?
I haven't been able to run even my toy web apps without something like monit - due to both things under my control and outside of it.
Hype.la is the only real Tir app, with the Mongrel2 BBS demo being a "proto-Tir" app. There's hardly anyone on it yet since I didn't really "launch" it. Because of that, I just run it in screen and I'll worry about the deployment scenario later. Also, the Tir start command actually works kind of like a little monit/daemontools, so if a handler dies it gets restarted. It's pretty robust already.
And yeah I need some monit soon, but so far it's been running fine for the small scale.
On my hobby projects I run stuff in screen, I haven't had a problem and my server uptime is currently above 200 days. Is it being used? Something like 1,000 concurrent users for most of the day, so yes.
I regarded this as cowboy, but as it worked for me I haven't needed to re-visit it.
It is cowboy, but there is a time and place for that. If you did this in a large organization, you'd be putting the team at risk. Since it is just you, well, do what you find prudent.
I haven't been able to run even my toy web apps without something like monit - due to both things under my control and outside of it.