Ruby 3.0 came out almost a year ago, and Rails, its web development framework, has been used for over 4 million websites total so far. We appreciate these technologies for their stability and speed, and recommend them highly to clients interested in building web apps. Today, we want to share our 9 key takeaways from over a decade of working with Ruby on Rails.
As of September 2021, Rails supports over a million live websites worldwide, mainly in the US. Its usage growth has been near-constant for the last decade. We’re not surprised - Rails is a fantastic technology, appropriate both for startups and large corporations. Let’s take a look at why.
Ruby on Rails in the best tool for MVP development
Rails provides everything you need to quickly build a product and start collecting feedback from the first users. Thanks to the “conventions over configuration” approach, you can focus on building the code instead of preparing the configuration. Your development team can quickly build many features using ready and tested RubyGems - ready made solutions that can be plugged into any project and adjusted to fit its needs. Additionally, you can use built-in generators to create a standard code for creating, updating, viewing, and deleting data, further speeding up the development process.
Rails is flexible
You can start with the database of your choice and then switch it in the middle of the development without rewriting that part of the code. You can also run the application on different servers.
Rails is perfect for cooperation with the frontend
If you plan to have a separate frontend application, you can use Rails as the backend API and benefit from all the features that you use in a typical monolith application.
Rails is easy testable
The Ruby approach to software development ephasizes the important of quality assurance. With Rails, you can quickly write valuable tests for every level of the application, and automate the testing process to truly ensure that your code is working as expected.
Ruby gives developers a lot of joy
Developers love to work with Ruby because it was designed to give them a lot of pleasure. They can easily create readable and maintainable code, which means they are likely to approach their tasks with joy and engagement.
Rails application is easy to maintain and scale
As a result of supporting best practices that result in clean code, Rails apps are easy to maintain in the long term. If you validate your business idea and decide to continue improving the application, it’s easy to continue using Rails and add the next planned features. Additionally, changes in the team are not a problem. The code is usually so easy to read that any Ruby expert can come in and quickly understand what each line is supposed to achieve.
It’s easy to deploy Rails application
You can deploy your Rails application in minutes by using solutions like Heroku. Then, you can add more elements to the application live, without disrupting your users’ experience.
You can benefit from the active community
The Rails community is very active and continues working on many open-source projects that can help you launch your startup quickly. They create gems for various purposes, how-to’s for solving specific problems, and best practices based on recent findings in the field of software development. The Rails community hasn’t let us down in over 10 years, and we don’t think it ever will.
With Rails, it’s easy to start a new project
Just choose a name, run the generator, and you have a fully working skeleton for the application. It is that simple. Your team can immediately begin building features and show you the first results in only weeks, or even days.
Conclusion
As you can see, Ruby on Rails continues being a good choice for multiple types of web applications. It’s used in ecommerce, fintech, hospitality, and corporate solutions. Big players that opted for Rails include Airbnb, Bloomberg, Shopify, Twitch, and GitHub. If you are looking for a stable, reliable, and powerful solution for your project, Ruby on Rails might be just what you need.
Whether you need to build an MVP, fast, or build a large and scalable platform, Ruby on Rails meets your needs. iRonin.IT’s team knows RoR in and out. Let’s chat, and we’ll help you get started.
