Why Ruby on Rails is Ideal for Solo Developers

Introduction

Hello there, my name is Dmytro. I'm a Ruby on Rails (RoR) engineer and want to share my thoughts about my experience with RoR and praise the Ruby community. I hope this series of posts will inspire people who are thinking about which language to choose for building a career in IT, and if at least one picks Ruby — my goal will be achieved. 

If you are an experienced RoR developer, probably you already know all these, but if you have something to add, please do it in the comments.

Why do I need it? First, I want to structure my knowledge. Secondly, I believe that something great becomes even better when shared with others. Plus, I genuinely enjoy working with Ruby.

The Community

When you ask anyone who works with Ruby, why do they like it, I bet most will mention the community. It’s truly special: active, highly supportive, and incredibly welcoming. So, don’t hesitate to start! If you face some problems — probably there are already some blog posts or questions on StackOverflow. But in general, there is one place to start — Rails Guide, where you have everything.

It’s a full-stack framework

This means it provides both the front-end and back-end development capabilities. As a Ruby on Rails developer, you can do the entire development process alone, from building the user interface with fancy UI to managing the server-side logic and database interactions. And it’s usually very easy, because of Rails’ guiding principle: Convention over Configuration.

Convention over configuration

The key idea is that Rails tries to make many common decisions for the developer. By following these conventions, developers can avoid much of the repetitive, boring configuration work that allows them to focus on more important, unique aspects of their application. This also leads to cleaner, more maintainable code, and better understandable for other devs if you want to share your code or apply some ideas from the internet, because the structures are the same. I know that it sounds abstract for now, but believe me, when you get it you get it.

Development speed

Since a lot of stuff is already configured by default and there is a huge list of open source solutions in gems, you can quickly plug those implementations and bring your ideas into the application very fast. So, you can share your pet-project with the internet in minutes. Or you can find a job because it is particularly beneficial for startups and small businesses that need to launch their products quickly to stay competitive. Additionally, the speed of development can lead to lower costs and faster time-to-market. BTW, you can check the Ruby on Rails salaries on the dou.eu salaries widget.

Is Ruby on Rails dead?

Nope! And such giants as Shopify, GitHub, and AirBnB, are proof of that. Fun fact, DOU.EU is built with Rails as well. But you can always check here https://isrubyonrailsdead.com/ 😂

But joking aside, one of the reasons why this question appears is that companies sometimes shift away from Ruby due to the perceived scarcity of Ruby developers. And this is another reason I write this to encourage people to try RoR.

Not only Rails

While Rails is fantastic, it’s built on Ruby language. So, as you can guess Ruby has the power to make the development process enjoyable and efficient. And Ruby isn’t limited to web applications! Here are a few other areas where Ruby shines:

• There are games written in Ruby. Check out tutorials like building Tetris
• Desktop applications and other GUI development
• Data analysis 
• And more!

Stay tuned! In my upcoming posts, I’ll share essential knowledge and effective approaches. Make sure to bookmark it!