Ruby on Rails: Is It Still Worth Your Attention?

As the world gets more digitized, websites and apps are becoming more commonplace in our lives. And as the needs of users and developers change, so too does the technology used to develop different solutions.

As a result of all these developments, our world today is flooded with uncountable applications and accompanying technologies that power our daily-use digital solutions.

Similarly, many technologies have had to evolve over time to build more sophisticated and vibrant websites and apps. Ruby on Rails (ROR) counts among those technologies that dominate in that respect.

However, every now and then you'll find information about the demise of the ROR web framework in the technology world. But, having survived 17 years since its release, the technology doesn’t look anywhere close to exiting from the world of technology.

Ruby on Rails is a primary choice for many developers developing web apps and websites even today, with many important and modern uses and applications.

A Brief Intro to Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is a web application framework (a set of resources and tools for software developers to build and manage web applications, web services, and websites) that is free and open-source. The framework comes with lots of features that enable developers to build high-end web applications and craft top-notch web apps with varied features.

The framework works with the Ruby programming language which is very easy to learn and understand similar to the English language. By utilizing ROR or hiring ROR developers, you can build excellent out-of-box websites and apps for your business that come bundled with extensive functionality to ensure stellar user experience.

Just like many other web frameworks, ROR does have its downsides, but it also offers many advantages. You may come across articles and blogs saying that ROR is dead, but it actually still has a lot of potential, allowing developers to build advanced, feature-rich web applications.

7 Reasons to Choose ROR for Your Web Development

If you are still not sure about Ruby on Rails, here are some of the top reasons why you should seriously consider ROR for your web development projects:

1. Speed

Ruby is simple, cleaner, and logical with a codebase that is easy to comprehend though little redundant code. Consequently, Ruby offers accelerated development speed.

This web development framework helps developers save time when coding and stay focused on delivering better solutions.

Because of less amounts of coding, the time spent on coding is also less and yet the functionality still remains the same. It, thus, offers very speedy development.

2. Cost-effective

Many times, web development work can cost you an arm and leg, depending on your requirements and the scale of the project. Saving on the cost of development is one of the most important aspects of web development and an ROR developer can bring you cost-effectiveness.

The more time is spent on a web development of a project, the more it will cost you. Due to the speed at which projects can be completed or modified with ROR, you end up having to pay less money to create or maintain your web solutions. That’s a win for you.

Besides, Ruby on Rails is an open-source web framework, which means no license fee. So, you can save costs on license fees too.

But, while choosing ROR for your project could be a beneficial decision in terms of costs, always  set goals properly to ensure you create a solid web application, per your target users’ needs.

3. Flexibility

Another key advantage of the Ruby on Rails web framework is that it is a flexible framework that can adapt to varied project requirements.

Being a flexible framework, apps built with this framework can adapt to varied tech developments, advancements, and updates related to innovations happening in business processes.

Ruby is a very flexible and expressive language, making it possible to solve different problems in different ways. It offers many opportunities and freedoms so you can opt for the best-suited solution for any given project you may have.

4. Easy to start with ROR

Getting started with Ruby on Rails is not a hard nut to crack. Code created in Ruby is very readable and largely self-explanatory. Developers can utilize the existing documentation and material to get a good understanding of Ruby on Rails without requiring additional or extraneous further documentation than what’s officially available.

Because more than 90% of ROR uses Ruby programming language, developers can do their work just by having a good grasp of the Ruby language. In this way, ROR provides a good variety and different types of integration that you needed for projects.

Projects are well-structured, so a developer will know the project details from the beginning. Consequently, downtime for businesses is minimal if ever they should need to find another ROR developer for an existing or new project.

5. Scalability

When it comes to developing a web solution, scalability has become an important determinant of the technology you choose. Ruby on Rails was notorious for its scalability problems for a long time. For example, programs written in both ROR and Java can have different performance, especially in Java’s efficiency as is related to multithreading apps.

However, with the release of Rails 6, most of Rails scalability issues were resolved. So, Ruby on Rails starting from release version 6 is a very scalable web framework that allows efficient creation of modern and scalable web apps.

Scalability is important to get a flexible and robust web framework. With scalability, you can add more functionality or expand your web app to accommodate new requirements of your business as it grows. So, you can now take advantage of ROR web framework 6 or later to build scalable web apps without any worry.

6. High data protection

The media is flooded with information and news about hackers breaching the data of businesses. Cybercrimes have become a rampant and major concern for all kinds of businesses and online users, whether it’s a multi-national business or a common internet user.

As such, data protection has become a very important aspect for any business’ web application or web service development. However, for businesses and organizations, this concern is generally far greater than that of a common individual person.

Ruby on Rails has invested a lot of effort into making the framework secure and well-protected for everyone. And so, this framework has impressive data protection capabilities, including providing credit card data and password encryption.

Ruby on Rails also has special measures included to stop XSS and SQL injection attacks, among many other data protection and security capabilities. Thus, the framework is designed to enable you create highly secure and protected web applications.

7. High maintainability and reliability

Stability is an essential aspect of every kind of business. ROR takes a test-driven-development approach that supports comprehensive testing capabilities.

Consequently, web solutions developed using ROR are maintainable and stable. Even the framework itself is covered by automatic tests. This makes it an even more reliable solution for developing web solutions.

In conclusion

When it comes to web development, developers have plenty of technologies to develop web solutions. However, many of these technologies lack the right set of tools to build a perfect solution, while others lack some features to build an attractive web app.

Depending on the project requirements, you have to pick the right technology that is best suited for your project. Ruby on Rails is one of the prominent and most efficient web app frameworks that is widely used for developing best-in-class web apps.

ROR has many excellent features that enable it to beat many high-end web app frameworks, but it does also have some downsides. Be sure to check on those too.

Ultimately, though, Ruby on Rails is still worth it. Give it a try.