Is Ruby on Rails the Right Back-End Technology for Your App?

The importance of front-end and back-end development nowadays has become more crucial than ever. The reason behind that is, website applications are getting more and more advanced, and developers are trying their best to choose what technology stacks are well suited to merge for developing quality web applications.

A technology stack is a set of libraries, frameworks, programming languages, servers, databases, and other essential elements for developing software. These elements are stacked together to complement each other and build a fully functional application.

In web development, the stack includes:

The front-end development, also known as the "client-side", is a part of the web application and responsible for what the user sees when they load the application. The entire front-end technology stack comprises HTML, CSS, and JavaScript components along with frameworks such as React and Angular.

The back-end development, also called "server-side", is responsible for what goes behind the scenes and which users can't see within a web application. Back-end development's components consist of programming languages like Ruby and Python; and frameworks such as Ruby on Rails and Django.

That said, selecting the right back-end technology would be the first thing to do when you plan to build a web application, as it is responsible for your application's performance. But choosing the right back-end technology for your application is not as easy as there are many technologies to choose from. And among these great technologies is Ruby on Rails.

Now, at this point, you might be asking yourself, "Is Ruby on Rails the right back-end for my application?". Indeed, it is difficult to choose between Ruby on Rails and other frameworks, and this is precisely why we created this article for you!

This article will cover an overview of what Ruby on Rails is and discuss its benefits. Additionally, we will discuss what web projects Ruby on Rails is best for as we provide you with examples. And by the end of this article, surely you will know if Ruby on Rails is the right back-end for your application.

What is Ruby on Rails?

Ruby on Rails, also known as "Rails", is a back-end web application framework written in Ruby programming language. Rails provide developers the ability to build a robust web application in a time-efficient manner.

For over the years of its existence, Rails powered more than three million websites around the world. By allowing developers to simplify complex coding tasks with its clear architecture, Rails is considered a valuable framework for productive web development.

Part 2.

Benefits of Using Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails framework follows three major principles, which promote simplification of complex applications.

I. Model-View-Controller (MVC)

An architectural design pattern used for creating modern user interfaces. This pattern divides related logical components into three interconnected elements:

Model

It contains all the application's data and its related logic.

View

It is the visual representation of the data. It is what the users see and interact with on their screens.

Controller

It is the interface between Model and View components. The controller interprets user input and gathers data from the model to render in the View.

MVC greatly supports parallel development, allowing developers to work with the Model, View, and Controller separately but simultaneously. This way, an application built using the MVC model can be completed three times faster than applications built using other development patterns. Not to mention, the separation of concerns allows developers to maintain the application easily.

II. Convention-over-Configuration (CoC)

This principle is one of the main reasons why RoR is a top choice among developers. RoR assumes many logical situations by default, allowing developers to minimize the number of decisions they make. This approach eliminates the need for additional configuration files, leading to faster development, code consistency, and easy maintenance.

By adopting and following these conventions rather than creating your own rules, you can develop web applications in a much lesser time with fewer lines of code than creating similar web applications using Java, for example. Moreover, following these conventions makes the code more readable and concise, resulting in easier navigation inside an RoR application.

On the other hand, if you want to ignore conventions, you can overwrite and replace them with your own code however you want. But bear in mind that the conventions that Rails provide are not arbitrary but rather have been established by a community of excellent and high-level developers. Thus, it doesn't really make sense to waste time overwriting them.

III. Don’t - Repeat - Yourself (DRY)

This principle aims to encourage developers to reduce the repetition of information within a complex system. It means that whenever possible, always reuse as much code as possible rather than duplicating similar code.

By doing so, it reduces the number of errors, keeps the code clean, and implements the principle of writing code once and reusing it. Also, it will become easier and more efficient to update the code in one place than to update multiple areas of the same code. Thus, making your code robust and modular.

With all that being said, the main goal of these three principles is simple: to make Ruby on Rails an easy, simple, feasible, and preferred framework for app development.

And along with these principles, the following are benefits that the Ruby on Rails framework offers:

Time and Cost-Efficient

Tight budget and time constraint is often the main deal-breaker for startups. Development time is indeed the customer's money; the longer the development, the more expensive it is. Ruby on Rails is designed to allow developers to build powerful web applications in a lesser amount of time possible.

Moreover, open-source status is one of the first things to consider when choosing the right back-end framework. RoR is an open-source framework, which means you can use the framework without any charge. Thus, it is the perfect framework for startups.

Consistent

RoR developers need to follow the standardized file storage systems and programming conventions. And as a result, the application code is clean, readable, and very maintainable.

A clean and readable codebase means that you only require a lesser amount of time to update the code in the future. This is also what makes RoR development both time and cost-efficient.

Massive Community

This is one of the most rewarding things when you go with Ruby on Rails on your project. The Rails world has full of highly skilled developers who constantly improve their coding and serve others on their projects.

The community provides many rich and free plug-ins, referred to as gems, that are very useful when developing your RoR application. These plug-ins are very convenient for startups that want to create new feature-rich applications in a very time-efficient manner.

Moreover, if you are stuck and have issues while developing your application, there is a very high chance that someone else has already found a solution and is willing to help and share it with you.

Scalable

Another benefit of Rails that needs to consider is its scalability. An application built using RoR can be scaled to process thousands of requests per second by multiple users.

Shopify, an e-commerce platform, is said to receive eighty thousand requests per second. This means that RoR can cater to a massive amount of users simultaneously without facing any scalability issues.

That said, Rails is an excellent solution for applications with users that are actively growing. This is also why many e-commerce projects prefer Ruby on Rails as their technology.

Security

The people responsible for developing Ruby on Rails invested a great deal of time and effort into the framework's data protection capabilities. Rails have some security-centric features such as password and credit card data encryption, making the application protected from SQL injections and XSS attacks.

Moreover, the framework has plenty of gems that address other security threats.

Easy Code Maintenance

Adding new features or modifying an existing code within your web application is easy and quick to perform in RoR. That said, this framework is very effective for long-term and startup projects to its stability and predictability

Part 3.

So Why Use Ruby on Rails?

Scalable, secure, have huge community support, and all of the things mentioned above. With all of those benefits in mind, one thing is clear, Ruby on Rails is indeed a worthy option as your back-end technology for your application.

But why choose Ruby on Rails for your application? RoR provides developers the best tooling, quality code, and rich libraries. Not to mention its massive community, where excellent and high-quality developers are present and are actively providing useful add-ons for other developers. Moreover, the framework follows a structured approach, which results in cleaner and more readable coding than other frameworks.

Tools

Rails provides highly functional tools that help you integrate new features in your application in a lesser amount of time. These tools provide a standard structure for developing web applications, where all the common and essential patterns are taken care of for you.

Libraries

As one of the best programming languages, Ruby provides a wide set of third-party libraries(gem). That means whatever you need for your application, most likely there is already a gem for it. And if there is a gem for it, it speeds up the development of your application. Moreover, these gems are all publicly available and searchable through https://rubygems.org/.

Huge Community

RoR has one of the largest communities of developers that holds regular meetups where they collaborate to solve complex web application development problems. After all, it is one of the most popular languages in social coding sites, GitHub.

Code Quality

Simple and high-readability codebase are some of the Rails' important assets, resulting in a better code quality compared to other technologies used for PHP and NodeJS.

Popular in Silicon Valley

RoR is very popular, particularly in Silicon Valley and other startup cities. History has shown that technology that receives wide recognition from the valley will be gradually adopted worldwide. Big companies like Shopify, GitHub, Basecamp, Airbnb, and many more successful startups are all using Ruby on Rails.

Productivity

Ruby is an easy-to-understand and straightforward programming language since its syntax is very much close to spoken language. And if combined with third-party libraries, it enables you to build feature-rich applications quickly. That said, Ruby is considered as one of the most productive programming languages around.

Test Automation

RoR also promotes testing automation, which is very valuable for delivering good quality software. Also, its test automation is one of the reasons why Ruby libraries are so rich.

Part 4.

What Projects Ruby on Rails is Best For?

Despite all the benefits that Ruby on Rails can offer, it is still not a "Golden solution" for every type of web project. That said, the following are type of projects where Ruby on Rails shines the most:

SaaS Projects

When choosing the right technology for your SaaS product, you need to consider these three important traits; scalability, performance, and security. And Ruby on Rails delivers it all.

Have you ever heard of Basecamp? It is one of the best project management software tools and the first application built using Ruby on Rails that adopted the SaaS model. This SaaS product made communication and management a breeze. Huge businesses all over the world are using Basecamp to do their work in a systematic and time-efficient way.

E-Commerce Projects

As a part of the SaaS industry, an e-commerce application should also be scalable, high-performance, and secured. Since Ruby on Rails offers these three crucial aspects, it is no wonder that many developers prefer Rails when it comes to e-commerce web application development.

That said, the most vivid example of an e-commerce platform that is built using Ruby on Rails is Shopify. This e-commerce web application lets you create your own online store easily, even if you don't have much technical knowledge. Shopify helped make the lives of online store owners a lot easier. Groupon and Airbnb are also some great examples in this regard.

Live-Streaming and Social Media Platforms

If you are a gamer, surely you have already heard about Twitch. It is one of the most popular live-streaming platforms and a community for gamers, where you can watch your favorite gamer playing games and chat with fellow gamer friends.

This amazing streaming platform built using Rails has over 140 million monthly active users and over 15 million daily active users. This large number of users translates to how powerful Ruby on Rails is. Of course, with exceptional RoR developers working in Twitch, they were able to use the framework's full potential and prove that it can compete and stand out against other competitors with similar services.

News and Data Analytics Platform

When you plan to develop a web solution centered in data analytics, news platform, or both combined, then go for Rails. As you might know, Bloomberg, one of the world-renowned financial data providers, uses Ruby on Rails for all of its web applications.

Part 5.

Conclusion

RoR is a powerful framework for building stable, reliable, and robust web applications while being one of the best options in terms of cost-effectiveness. It leverages the benefits of the Ruby programming language for its easy-to-understand code and speedy web development.

Moreover, Rails is best for rapid application development, and it can adapt to changes quickly. Its excellent test automation further promotes rapid development while keeping the quality of the product. With Rails, web designing is easier, and web development and maintenance will be much more cost-effective. The framework is also famous for its scalability, consistency, massive and vibrant community, and security strength. All these benefits that RoR offers make the framework one of the fastest and efficient ways to develop websites and web applications.

So what do you think about Ruby on Rails? is it the right back-end for your application? In the end, we can't tell you for sure whether Ruby on Rails is the right back-end application for your project. But there is no doubt that RoR is one of the best web development frameworks to consider for your next web application project.

If you have a potential startup idea and want to hire a company, you might want to check out Bootyard. It is a Ruby on Rails web development company that will make your startup idea turn into a great software product.

Want to know more about Bootyard? checkout their website