It's absolutely incredible that it can take so much effort just to make it run. ActiveMQ seems shiny and interesting on the outside, but the prolific number of war stories took it off my list.

In brilliant contrast, RabbitMQ is it-just-works software. It's a piece of infrastructure that works so well it practically just fades into the background. I couldn't imagine having to worry about a service in which the chief goal is to help alleviate reliability concerns.