For the success of a web app, the back end development is as crucial as the front end. Developers are in a constant search to find the best framework to suit their needs. While there had been rumours and articles on the end of Ruby on Rails (RoR), the truth is that the framework is alive and kicking for the past 15 years. RoR can be considered among the best web app frameworks.
What is Ruby on Rails?
Ruby on Rails is a web framework written and based on Ruby, giving the developers a structural framework for the code they write. Rails are to Ruby just as Django is to Python. Ruby has other frameworks like Hanami, Sinatra and Padrino. However, RoR is the framework preferred by developers. Rails follow the “convention over configuration” principle, helping in the speed of development. RoR also emphasizes on REST (Representational State Transfer), application designing, making the application to be easily exposed as an API.
Released in 2005, the same year as Django, Rails promoted the MVC (Model-View-Controller) pattern and promoted good coding practices like DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle. RoR reduced the burden on the developers by reducing the tedious code, helping them focus more on business logic and features of the web app. This helped companies deliver MVPs (Minimum Viable Product) and apps much faster.
Why Rails?
The key strength of RoR is the ease and speed of coding. With amazing tooling and a standard structure for web apps, coding is easy and fast in ruby. Developers find it easy to shift between the projects as it follows the same structure. RoR is good for rapid application development (RAD) as it makes it easy to make the necessary changes in the web app.
Rails provide extensive gems, the third-party libraries, for almost any purposes. RoR has also a self-documenting feature, helping the developers to save creating a separate document and switch between projects. The object-oriented nature and ease of use make coding in Ruby easy and faster. Being open-source, rails has no licensing cost like many other commercial development frameworks.
Ruby on Rails developed a strong focus on testing and provides great testing frameworks like Rspec, minitest and cucumber. The Ruby community considers testing and test automation to be sacred in web development. The practice incredibly helps in delivering a quality software product. The testing frameworks is another reason why Rails libraries are good.
Ruby on Rails is a popular language among the developers and is adopted by major companies like Airbnb, GitHub, Basecamp, Shopify, Yellow pages and many more. The Ruby community is very strong, both online and offline. Almost every major city in the world, including Kochi, has a strong active Ruby community hosting meetups regularly.
Limitations
Ruby on Rails is not perfect. It faces issues like speed performances when compared to NodeJs, Java or Golang with highly scalable products. The server architecture or database can be the shared culprit for slow performance and scalability. RoR faces hosting issues when compared to PHP as many low-end shared hosting providers are not able to handle the performance and the features. However, hosts like Heroku, EngineYard and Amazon is available.
Conclusion
Ruby on Rails is one of the best frameworks for a web app. The quality codebase, the maintainability of RoR applications, the great database supportability and the extensive community support makes Rails a standout performance among other web frameworks. Ruby on Rails is a great option for web development, even in 2020.
Nuventure Connect is a software service provider based in Kochi, Kerala, India. Our 10 years of experience in Ruby on Rails makes us a prominent player in the industry. Our skilled team of RoR developers can help you build your web app in the right and structured way. Turn your business into an efficient one by utilizing the potential of Ruby on Rails.
