Ruby on Rails is a framework which is widely used for web development. The framework is developed in Ruby. Words that come to mind while talking about Ruby on Rails are: simple, agile and fast. Although Ruby on Rails is known to be a good fit for startups, it is also used by big companies like Airbnb, the early days of Twitter, and Basecamp. Let’s learn some more about web development with this particular framework.
Is it Ruby or is it Ruby on Rails? Well Ruby is indeed its own programming language which was created back in 1995 by Yukihiro Matsumoto. He wanted to create a programming language which was easy to understand for people. Lots of organizations, as mentioned in the intro, use ruby because of the fact that it is relatively easy to understand.
So where does Rails come in? Well Rails is a framework that complements Ruby and makes it easier to use. Ruby can be so extremely versatile that it can become hard to keep your mind on its actual powers. Rails has many shortcuts that can prevent you from writing many lines of code to create, relatively simple, functions (i.e. a link).
The framework is, as discussed in the intro, a popular one for startups and small/medium businesses. This also because of the fact that Ruby on Rails is easy to understand, but that is not the only advantage of Ruby on Rails in the eyes of startups. Startups like the framework for its:
Ability to develop rapidly: One of the most important things within Rails is that you don’t want to repeat yourself to often. That means that you don’t have to spent time on repeating the same things over and over, which will leave time for other important things;
Agile way of “thinking”: The agile methodology is made to improve communication between clients and the developers. This allows startups to adapt to the real time demands of the customers. Ruby on Rails is created in such a way that it’s is a perfect fit for the agile methodology.
Low costs: Of course Ruby on Rails saves time in development and thus it will save you costs for development time. But Ruby is also open source, which means free. Most startups are on a tight budget, so the Ruby on Rails framework is a perfect way to save costs on developing a web-app.
Many people in the past years have speculated that ruby on rails is dying. But we think that this isn’t the case. The speculations began because the framework was known to be slow and very hard to scale with. We also know that that was in fact the case with this framework, but we see that, with every update, the Ruby on Rails framework is constantly improving to get rid of that reputation.
We are not the only one to think that Ruby on Rails is not dead. Last year ruby still took the 8th place in the top 10 programming languages according to an article on Forbes. The article also states that Ruby on Rails is still growing in popularity and thus cannot be declared dead by a long shot.
So we’ve seen how Ruby on Rails works and that it is in fact still a popular language/framework to develop a web app in (so certainly NOT dead). It’s also a “simple” and good framework for small/medium businesses because of its ability to develop rapidly, its agile way of thinking, and its low costs.
So if you are thinking about developing a web app with Ruby on Rails, it is time to stop thinking and start doing. If you don’t know how to start doing, you can always give us a call so we can help you with, for example, creating a POC with Ruby on Rails.