Our little Ruby on Rails is reaching the legal age, can you believe it? These 17 years of Ruby development went so fast, and we didn’t even notice how our gem framework became so old.
Sadly, the fact that Ruby on Rails has already been here for almost two decades makes it a more challenging decision to hire Ruby developers. The main question is: is Ruby on Rails still a thing, or is it slowly getting out of the market?
We’ll give you all the answers! Here is the good and the bad of Ruby development.
Let’s first start with the good sides. What aspects of Ruby make it such a good choice?
Easier Flow with the Conventions
The Ruby developers know the famous saying: “Do it the rails way.” The thing is that Rails offers a bunch of conventions that help you skip the overly complicated configurations and complete a task much faster.
Ruby clearly mentions that if there is a certain defined way to do things in the Ruby on Rails community, follow it. If you don’t, you’ll find yourself going with the longer and unnecessarily tricky path. In the end, conventions not only simplify your coding but help you to keep it consistent.
As a result, your project will be easy to follow for the other Rails developers as the structure and coding practices are pretty much the same within all Rails projects.
In general, Ruby code is self-documenting: it improves your productivity, reduces the amount of documentation needed, and makes it easy to pick up the projects of others.
Fast Development
With Rails, the development process does not take much time. No, seriously: with no other framework is developing a project that fast. That’s why so many startups are in love with it. According to statistics, Ruby on Rails developers build an app 40% faster than teams that work without our technologies.
So even if you want to develop your app using a different framework, it is still a good idea to create its prototype with Ruby.
It’s Full of Gems
And we mean it literally. Ruby is famous for its large library of gems that help its developers in all the different situations. The main task for the development team is to focus on the logic, without worrying much about the implementation part. Why? Well, Ruby will take care of it for you!
The library of gems is meant to make the implementation of your features easier, bridging the external services with your app. The best part is that you can use the majority of gems for free!
We all know how hard developing can sometimes get; gems are for helping you out when you feel stuck at a certain point, be that the development of a feature or the implementation of an external application.
The gems are probably one of the reasons the development with Ruby is so fast.
Okay, enough praise. Now it is time to get to the bad.
What are some of the disadvantages of Ruby on Rails? We’ll list them one by one.
Speed
Well, we’ll be honest. Although developing with Ruby is pretty fast, Ruby itself is not a guarantee for speed. If you are working on a high-scale project and need lightning operational speed, then forget about Ruby. But of course, not all projects require maximum scalability. So if your main goal is to get a secure and intuitive app, Ruby is still an option.
Flexibility
Another issue with Ruby is that it is not very flexible. As we’ve mentioned, the common saying among Ruby developers is “Do it the rails way,” which pretty much sums up the entire philosophy of Ruby.
Of course, it is an advantage in many ways, but the issue is that if you don’t do it the rails way, it gets pretty complicated. So forget about flexibility if you’re going to work with Ruby. You need to follow the default set of rules, and you better get used to them.
Still, these issues do not mean Ruby should be off of your list. In fact, the advantages outweigh the downsides. Of course, in the end, it all depends on what your project requirements are, but if your main question is whether Ruby is worth the shot, the answer is simple: definitely.
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