Pros and Cons of Using Ruby on Rails for a Startup Development

Ruby on Rails is a web application framework created on the base of Ruby programming language. It was created to make coding faster and easier. RoR’s templates enable developers to generate a skeleton application with custom “gems” (open-source code) and configurations. Also, RoR is based on the principles of not repeating the same code and optimizing developer’s work to make minimum decisions. Hence, a developer can reuse the code and retrieve information from a database.

The framework appeared more than 15 years ago. Danish developer David Heinemeier Hansson created it in 2003 as a part of the inner code for Basecamp (previously 37signals, a web app company specialized in building solutions for efficient project management). The framework was officially presented to the world in 2004th.

RoR has greatly influenced web development through innovative features such as a seamless database table creation, data migration, and others. It continues influencing programming tools. Frameworks such as Django, Catalyst, Phoenix, and Sails.js borrow RoR’s productive features.

Ruby on Rails enables to build various types of products, such as web applications, mobile desktop applications, embedded applications, chat applications, marketplaces, management systems, etc. It is widely used by startup developers. Famous companies that used RoR include Twitter, Airbnb, Shopify, Ask.fm, Netflix.

The RoR’s popularity among startups is provided by several factors, in particular, the maturity of the ecosystem, the availability of plenty of educational resources, and a wide support community. Moreover, building a startup with Ruby on Rails is 30-40% faster than by using other technologies. Saving time equals saving money that is important for startups with limited budgets.

Let’s take a more detailed look at the RoR capacities, which startups should know before choosing RoR.

Pros
Time-efficiency

Ruby on Rails is a productive framework. Its components are reusable and easily configurable which speeds up the development time.

Quality

Ruby on Rails has an option for integrated testing that checks the quality of the written code. This means that there’s little or no need for third-party testing tools. There are special automated tests that check how the code works. They help to eliminate errors and prevent unpredicted costs on debugging or reworking.

Open-source

Ruby on Rails is an open-source framework, which distributes under the MIT license. This means you can access libraries for free. This is a great benefit for startups.

Security

RoR possesses strong security by default. It has a few built-in features that prevent hacker attacks. The huge community of the framework’s contributors is working on detecting vulnerabilities and patching them. However, if some features are not developed properly and you don’t put any effort to maintain the security of code, this will increase your software vulnerabilities. You can find more about RoR security in the guide.

**Popularity among developers **

Despite lasting discussions about Ruby’s dying, it was one of the top 10 languages that developers used worldwide in 2017. Because of language popularity, you won’t have difficulties finding a substitution for a team member. There are many highly qualified RoR developers on the market.

However, it would be mistaken to claim that RoR is perfect. Like everything, it also has its pitfalls.

Cons

Runtime speed and scalability

Ruby on Rails' performance depends on the complexity of the product. It will be fast for blogs or other websites. However, bigger applications with huge traffic might have a slow runtime speed. For example, Twitter faced the deterioration of RoR performance after the network became wildly popular and moved some components to Scala in 2011. Since that time a lot has changed. Today there are more options to scale in RoR.

The risk to make mistakes

As mentioned, with RoR you can build applications fast. But this comes with a drawback. Some important aspects might slide away from the developers’ attention. And if there are any mistakes in the architecture, it will be difficult to correct them because all the components are tightly coupled and interdependent. In addition, extra hours of developers’ work cost money.

Learning

Though the number of Rails developers is quite big, learning the framework is quite demanding. Nevertheless, the open-source code libraries make the beginner developers’ life easier.

To sum up, RoR has many features suitable for startup development. Though Ruby on Rails has to compete with many widespread technologies such as Python, Node.js, and Elixir, it has many benefits attracting the developers. Ruby on Rails’ code is readable so that other developers can easily pick it. If you already have a web app running, it won't be a problem to find a Ruby on Rails development company to maintain your product. The framework has a friendly user experience, many free libraries, and a high level of security. There is an extensive community of RoR developers and a great number of resources to help you with any problem.
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